WM_SETFONT On ListView Works, But GetTextMetrics And GetTextExtentPoint32 Are Wrong.

Question

Hi again folks:
   The user can use a dialog to set the font typeface, size and type (bold or italic) for a ListView in a dialog. 
   This works great by setting the user's choices in a LOGFONT and deriving a font handle, then sending the font handle to the ListView with a WM_SETFONT message. 
   The text of the header labels and the list are the selected font, size and type. 
   The problem is that I need to adjust the width of the columns.   The size returned from a call to GetTextExtentPoint32() or the average char width returned by a call to GetTextMetrics() appear to be the default sizes, and are unchanged
by the choices the user makes. 
   So the columns can be too small for the larger fonts in the ListView. 
   After setting the ListView fonts, I've tried the HDC from the ListView and the ListView's header.  GetTextExtentPoint32() and GetTextMetrics() are the same for either HDC, and seem to be unchanged by any choice made by the user. 
   So I can't adjust the column width for the new font. 
   What am I doing wrong?
      Thanks
      Larry

Answer 1

Thanks Dave:
   I'm guessing this is a common mistake. 
   I was under the impression that a device context created for a window, or control, would have the font used by that window. 
   After posting, I tried this simple experiment;
    SendMessage(listview_handle, WM_SETFONT, (WPARAM)control_font,
TRUE);
    listview_hdc = GetDC(listview_handle);
    SelectObject(listview_hdc, control_font);
    GetTextMetrics(listview_hdc, &tm);
    ReleaseDC(listview_handle, listview_hdc);
#ifdef _DEBUG
    HDC listview_dc2 = GetDC(listview_handle);    HFONT test_font = HFONT(SendMessage(listview_handle, WM_GETFONT,
0, 0));    HFONT old_font = HFONT(SelectObject(listview_dc2, test_font));
    DeleteObject(old_font);
    TEXTMETRIC test_tm2;
    GetTextMetrics (listview_dc2, &test_tm2) ;
#endif
   The GetTextMetrics() call in the ifdef clause delivered the wrong values until I added the WM_GETFONT and the SelectObject. 
   So I'm guessing I need to add those lines to any code that needs to know the dimensions of the font. 
   Is there some reason the device context doesn't know the font of the window used to create it? 
   I believe I can safely DeleteObject() on anything returned by SelectObject(), without damaging stock objects.  Is this correct? 
   Does Direct2D sidestep these issues, or will I still be contending with these GDI "features" if I move the the new interface? 
   I appreciate the time you have taken to assist me.
      Thanks
      Larry