measuring SWT / JFace column header padding size

Question

I have a number of tables in an eclipse SWT application. They are Table/TableViewer tables and consist of a header, a row down the left with text and a series of graphics going across. There are 32 columns other than the text column, numbered from 0 to 31. On Windows 7 and XP in classic mode, the text is fine, but in XP normal mode, they are truncated so they appear to go 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 1. 1. 1. 1. 1. etc. There is clearly enough room for the text either way.

If I just set the default width to 28 instead of 25, as I found it, they are then fine, but obviously that isn't very good as then I need more room for the interface in Windows 7 and XP Classic, where it was already ok. I tried getting average width from fontmetrics but the text comes back as 5, in all modes. I can't find any way of either reducing of the padding (which would be the best way), or finding out how much padding there is (which would do). Do I need to draw the column headers manually?

ps: Sorry for the JFace / SWT, have only just started with this and not clear on the differences yet!

Answer 1

Calling TableColumn#pack() should give a column exactly the width it needs to display its content without wasting any space or truncating its content. This includes the column's header text.