>I'm not a glutton for punishment--i would never manually design forms in program files. I don't really like fiddling with the Form Designer. I have been toying with idea of writing something that programmatically sets object properties in a program file for controls based on meta-data.
>

That's what a form (SCX) is, BTW - a metadata table to create visual forms.
(So is a class library (VCX))
Since you're not a glutton for punishment ;-) save yourself the inevitable head-slamming-on-desk action that would accompany this effort and get used to the Form Designer (and Class Designer for visual classes).
It's not so bad once you get used to it. <g>

ps: To see the meta-data:
USE myform.scx