>Thank you for the insight. ...
>This might just be what I'm looking for.

It's quite nice, as you can work with bindevent etc. within the inner control structure. And it's still all encapsulated. But there is one little bug with this pseudo protection: SETALL() will not respect this boundary. So if you put some class based on control that has several labels in it on a form and isse THISFORM.SETALL("fontbold",.t.) also the labels within your protected control will get bold. although you couldn't do THISFORM.mycontrol1.label1.fontbold = .T.

Bye, Olaf.