>AFAIK, the trimming in reports is done outside the reportoutput.app, IOW it will work even if you provide an empty listener to REPORT FORM

Still all reports, even legacy types, are drawn with GDI+ by VFP9.

There is no other way to get the same functionality. But I see The GDI+ DrawText function accepts the following flags in it's uFormat parameter:

a) DT_MODIFYSTRING to get back the shortened string. Which is what you need mainly.
b) DT_END_ELLIPSIS, DT_PATH_ELLIPSIS or DT_WORD_ELLIPSIS to determine which kind of ellipsis.

see http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms533909(VS.85).aspx

You don't need to draw on the form, you just need a Graphics Object. I think this will be quite easy with GDIPLUSX from VFPX.

Bye, Olaf.