How to Determine pixels available for Text in System.Windows.Forms.Button

Question

I have a series of buttons that display filenames. If I set the Text property when the filename is wider than the number of pixels available the text "wraps" and instead if the text being displayed LeftMiddle it is displayed LeftTop. Therefore I only display as many characters as can be shown (using the PathCompactPathEx() method).

However - How can I tell how many pixels are available? My current approach is:

button.Width - button.Image.Width - button.Padding.Horizontal

This doesn't always work and sometimes the text still wraps.

Any clues as to what the correct way of determining the number of pixels available for text is?

Answer 1

Maybe you could use a monospaced font as Courier, if you determine the pixel's width of each char, then you just need to take care of not exceed your TextBox width

Hope this helps

Answer 2

You can use Graphics.MeasureString to determine the actual number of pixels used by a particular piece of text using a particular font.
There is also Graphics.MeasureCharacterRanges which I believe may be more accurate for text alignment but I've not personally used it.

Answer 3

The best approach you can get is to subscribe to Paint event (or make Button descendant and override OnPaint), and draw string the following way:

private void OnPaint(object sender, PaintEventArgs)
{
    Button SenderButton = (Button)sender;
    Rectangle TextRect = SenderButton.ClientRectangle;
    TextRect.Inflate(-10, -5); // You can use any rectangle you want
    // To avoid internal Button text drawing, assign "" to Button.Text, and use Tag instead
    string Text = (string)SenderButton.Tag;
    e.Graphics.DrawText(e.Graphics, Text, SenderButton.Font, TextRect, SenderButton.ForeColor,
        TextFormatFlags.PathEllipsis | TextFormatFlags.NoPrefix);
}

This is the only method that guaranteed that you never have wrapping again. Any width measurement (including MeasureString) may differ from internal Button painting processing, and as result you will have wrapping.