Differences between GetDC() and BeginPaint()? - winapi

Question

I am having trouble with some of my owner drawn listboxes on High DPI monitors on Windows 10 in a dialog box. The text is chopped off at the bottom. We saw the problem on Windows 7 and were able to fix it. It is not necessarily High DPI, but when the user sets a different text scaling. I solved the problem, so I thought (!), by using a CClientDC (wrapper around GetDC()) and calling GetTextMetrics() to determine the text height. Previously, our icons had always been taller than our text so it was not a problem. With larger DPI monitors we saw some customers reporting problems when they scaled the text.
Now we are getting new reports under Windows 10. The former problem is fine under Windows 7--but Windows 7 only scales to 100, 125, and 150 percent. Windows 10 (and maybe 8? -- but no customer reports) allows user defined scaling.
So, I tracked down the problem somewhat... I knew what the font height was when I called GetTextMetrics() during WM_MEASUREITEM. I went and put some code in to debug what GetTextMetrics() was during my WM_DRAWITEM. Well, they were different--20 pixels high during WM_MEASUREITEM, and 25 pixels high during WM_DRAWITEM. Obviously, that is a problem. I want the GetTextMetrics() to have the same results in both places.
My thought was that the only real difference I could think of was that during WM_MEASUREITEM I am calling GetDC() via CClientDC constructor, and that during WM_DRAWITEM I am using an already constructed HDC (which probably was from a return of GetPaint() inside GDI32.dll or another system DLL).
I thought maybe the BeginPaint() does something like select the windows HFONT into the HDC...
So, inside my WM_MEASUREITEM after getting the DC, I select the font of the listbox into the HDC, and then I call GetTextMetrics(). Lo and behold, the numbers match now in WM_MEASUREITEM and WM_DRAWITEM.
However, I don't know if I just got lucky. It's all just guesswork at this point.
Does BeginPaint() select the window font into the DC whereas GetDC() does not? Does the default handler of WM_PAINT for an owner drawn LISTBOX or COMBOBOX do something like select the window font into the paint DC?
BOOL DpiAwareMeasureGraphItem(LPMEASUREITEMSTRUCT lpM, CWnd* pWnd)
{
int iItemHeight = INTERG_BITMAP_HEIGHT + 4;
if (pWnd)
{
CClientDC dc(pWnd);
if (dc.GetSafeHdc())
{
CFont* pOldFont = dc.SelectObject(pWnd->GetFont()); // seems to fix it on Windows 10, but is it luck?
TEXTMETRIC tm;
memset(&tm, 0, sizeof(tm));
dc.GetTextMetrics(&tm);
LONG tmHeight = tm.tmHeight + 4; //pad
iItemHeight = max(iItemHeight, tmHeight);
dc.SelectObject(pOldFont);
}
}
lpM->itemHeight = iItemHeight;
return (TRUE);
}

Answer 1

Neither GetDC() or BeginPaint() initialise the DC they return with anything other than the default system font. But WM_DRAWITEM is different - it gives you an already-initialised DC to draw into.
The method you stumbled across is the right one. WM_MEASUREITEM doesn't supply a DC at all, so if you need one for size calculations you're responsible for obtaining it and setting it up with the appropriate font.