My problem is that the function seems to always want to start the text at the left border of the destination DC, regardless of the 'left'-member of the item-RECT, which only clips the text away. The only way I found to move the text to the right is to set the border-parameter - but this also makes a border between the columns as i just discovered.

So is there any way to put the text where i want it or do i have to write my own function for this ?

This is indeed a bug in utf8api.dll; I stumbled upon this and another related bug some time ago. You need to apply this patch to text_drawing.cpp. You will need to ship the patched version of utf8api.dll with your component, at least for the current version of foobar2000. I have already sent the patch to zZzZzZz, so it will be included in future releases.

thanks a lot

Hrmmm... I noticed this too but just figured it was the way it was intended to work.
Oh well, turned out DrawTextEx was what I really wanted anyway.