Question

We’ve noticed that when checking in updates, our .DFM files have added ExplicitWidth and ExplicitHeight properties – but we don’t know why.

My questions are:

• What are these properties for?
• Why are they automatically added by Delphi?

Below is an example showing the added ExplicitWidth property:

object Splitter2: TcxSplitter
    Left = 0
    Top = 292
    Width = 566
    Height = 8
    Cursor = crVSplit
    HotZoneClassName = 'TcxXPTaskBarStyle'
    AlignSplitter = salBottom
    Control = BottomPanel
    Color = clBtnFace
    ExplicitWidth = 8
end

Answer 1

From Googling….

Original article can be found here.

The Explicit properties remember the
previous bounds of a control before
the Align or Anchor properties are
changed from their defaults.

The only time the Explicit properties
are not written is when the Align
property is set back to its default
value of alNone.

This is when the Explicit properties
are actually used by the control to
reset its bounds to what it was
previously.