Hi Leon,
It is not distortion, it is by design.
Unfortunately, you have to accept it and live by it.
LinkTo property is part of the solution.
The fact is, if you want your items on exactly where they are, you need to handle the on After Form Resize event and set the coordinates of your items where you want them.
For your case, you want all your items to be anchored to the left.
For others, me for example, I want my right hand side items to be anchored to the right when the form resizes. I don't want my form to be all empty on the right.
Unless SAP introduces new property for items, vertical anchor and horizontal anchor, current design will never be able to satisfy all users.
XML files are not the perfect solution, there are other problems that you may encounter in the future, but designing complex form will be much easier and faster with this tool.
Regards
Edy