John just a few comments here.

I think you're partially wrong at your comment. I think you have to make a distinction between the properties of the control you're setting/using. Properties like controlsource, height, width are dependent on both the form and the control, and I think you could set them in some of the forms events/methods.
Properties like rowsource, color, number of columns, queries to get your data for your control should only be set in the events/methods of the control itself that is encapsulation and allows you to reuse your controls.
Also Foxpro initialises your controls before it intialises your form. And it is a pain to if you are not using views to set your controlsources on your controls because they crash when initialising and not finding there controlsource field. Somewhere I think this order of events doesn't make sense, it is liking creating trees and then creating the earth to put them on ?
What do you think ?