How can you dinamically adjust the size of components based on their labels?

When you code i18 GUIs you must pay attention to this in order for your GUI
not to look good for say English and half way cropped for a language like
German that tends form words by combining adjectives and nouns, so they
have incredibly long words you can utter in one breath
~
I remember having done/or read about it before, but I cannot find that
piece of code now
~
How do you do such a thing?
~
Thanx
lbrtchx

.