Microsoft KB Archive/171815

= FIX: Printer.TextWidth Returning Inconsistent Results in IDE =

Article ID: 171815

Article Last Modified on 11/18/2003

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APPLIES TO


 * Microsoft Visual Basic 5.0 Learning Edition
 * Microsoft Visual Basic 5.0 Professional Edition
 * Microsoft Visual Basic 5.0 Enterprise Edition

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This article was previously published under Q171815



SYMPTOMS
Using Printer.TextWidth from the IDE works correctly the first time a project is run, but may return incorrect values after that. You must completely close Visual Basic and restart to see correct results again. The TextWidth method works correctly for other objects, and Printer.TextWidth works correctly in an EXE.



CAUSE
Visual Basic closes the Printer Object's Font information incorrectly when switching from run-time to design-time, so, on subsequent runs, the Font information may not be retrieved properly.



STATUS
Microsoft has confirmed this to be a bug in the Microsoft products listed at the beginning of this article. This bug has been fixed in Visual Studio 97 Service Pack 2.

For more information on the Visual Studio 97 Service Pack 2, please see the following article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

170365 INFO: Visual Studio 97 Service Packs - What, Where, and Why

For a list of the Visual Basic 5.0 bugs that were fixed in the Visual Studio 97 Service Pack 2, please see the following article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

171554 INFO: Visual Basic 5.0 Fixes in Visual Studio 97 Service Pack 2



Steps to Reproduce Behavior
 Create a new Visual Basic 5.0 Standard EXE Project. Add a CommandButton to Form1.  Add code to the Click of the CommandButton to set the Printer object's Font information and to report Printer.TextWidth for a string. For example: Private Sub Command1_Click Printer.FontName = "Arial" Printer.FontSize = 8 Debug.Print Printer.Font.Name; Debug.Print Printer.FontSize; Debug.Print Printer.TextWidth("Any text string")

Printer.FontName = "Arial" Printer.FontSize = 12 Debug.Print Printer.Font.Name; Debug.Print Printer.FontSize; Debug.Print Printer.TextWidth("Any text string")

Printer.FontName = "Arial" Printer.FontSize = 8 Debug.Print Printer.Font.Name; Debug.Print Printer.FontSize; Debug.Print Printer.TextWidth("Any text string") End Sub  Run the project and click the button. Observe the Immediate Window. You will see the correct value for the text width of the string. Return to design view. Repeat steps 4 and 5 one or more times.</li></ol>

RESULTS: Values will be correct the first time this runs. But reported values will sometimes be incorrect on subsequent runs. When compiled into an EXE, the results are consistently correct.

Results are unaffected by using a StdFont object or by resetting the Printer and Font. For example, adding this before setting the font does not help: Printer.Print "" Printer.Font = "" Printer.ScaleMode = 1

Keywords: kbbug kbfix kbvbp500sp2fix kbvs97sp2fix KB171815

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