Overview
AFAIK on Android you have twi ways to set the texts of your application:
You can use string.xml with different locales
You can download strings from server and set every label with a setText(language.text) but it will be a pain
The problem might sussist if you have to change a text of your published application without re-publishing it; for example if you want to change for a specific translation a small text without any functionality change. (ie: you might notice that you wrote "Take picure" instead of "Take picture").
Library
i18next is a good library to manage translations dinamically from server, but you still have to add the text for each label you got.
So, my question is
Still AFAIK, there is no way to do it natively, but is there a low level library or a workaround that allows to replace a string in your string.xml with some downloaded text?
Another option could be to make our label text to point instead of at #string/myValue to something like #myresource.pathtovalue.
Honestly I think this could be an huge improvement for application, is there something useful?
I have a small problem regarding the EmojiCompat library which was introduced some weeks ago.
There is a group of people (including me) who don't quite like the new Emoji style, Google has introduced with Oreo.
As I like the good old blob emojis, I recently started updating this emoji font.
Now my problem:
The Android developer page shows that there are two ways of using EmojiCompat.
The first one is using downloadable fonts and the second one is using this bundled emoji font which is based on loading font assets.
I already have a working implementation of EmojiCompatConfig which allows me to load any font I have in my assets-folder and it works with the font provided in the bundled configuration but not with my own font.
The section "Library-Components" [I don't have enough/any reputation, so I can't provide a link to this section...] says the original Noto-Emoji font (which my font is actually based on) is modified in some way (i.e. moving the emojis into another area and adding some "Extra emoji metadata" which isn't really specified anywhere in the documentation).
I already tried to look for some differences using the ttx tool provided by fonttools.
It looks like these modifications are the only ones made.
The modified version differs in both the meta-table not present in the default noto font and in the actual positions the emoji glyphs have - probably because they movede the emojis to the private area.
Does anyone know how to recreate these modifications so I am able to use my own emoji font instead of that new one?
I already tried to search for this issue but I didn't find anything that could help me.
There has already been another post regarding whether or not it would be possible to use the iOS emojis using the downloadable font approach but I don't think these questions are the same...
The script to modify an existing CBDT/CBLC emoji font can be found here: https://android.googlesource.com/platform/external/noto-fonts/+/android-8.0.0_r17/emoji-compat/createfont.py
The "unicode path" that needs to be passed to the script should point to this data: https://android.googlesource.com/platform/external/unicode/+/android-8.0.0_r17
I've made an Android application that is available on Google Play. Now I want to add some more formatting to my app description (eg. indent, links, lists..). But I cannot find any website where possible formatting is listed. Google Help pages cannot help me either on this subject. There exists a lot of different formats and I don't really know which one to use (eg. HTML or wiki formatting..)
I could test it with trial and error, but that would take some time, because Google Play only refreshes after 2-3 hours. And while I'm testing, my app description would be rather ugly if the wrong format was used.
tl;dr Is there a list of all possible formatting I could use in the app description for Google Play?
Experimentally, I've discovered that you can provide:
Single line breaks are ignored; double line breaks open a new paragraph.
Single line breaks can be enforced by ending a line with two spaces (similar to Markdown).
A limited set of HTML tags (optionally nested), specifically:
<b>…</b> for boldface,
<i>…</i> for italics,
<u>…</u> for underline,
<br /> to enforce a single line break,
I could not find any way to get strikethrough working (neither HTML or Markdown style).
A fully-formatted URL such as http://google.com; this appears as a hyperlink.
(Beware that trying to use an HTML <a> tag for a custom description does not work and breaks the formatting.)
HTML character entities are supported, such as → (→), ™ (™) and ® (®); consult this W3 reference for the exhaustive list.
UTF-8 encoded characters are supported, such as é, €, £, ‘, ’, ★ and ☆.
Indentation isn't strictly possible, but using a bullet and em space character looks reasonable (• yields "• ").
Emoji are also supported (though on the website depends on the user's OS & browser).
Special notes concerning only Google Play app:
Some HTML tags only work in the app:
<blockquote>…</blockquote> to indent a paragraph of text,
<small>…</small> for slightly smaller text,
<big>…</big> for slightly larger text,
<sup>…</sup> and <sub>…</sub> for super- and subscripts.
<font color="#a32345">…</font> for setting font colors in HEX code.
Some symbols do not appear correctly, such as ‣.
All these notes also apply to the app's "What's New" section.
Special notes concerning only Google Play website:
All HTML formatting appears as plain text in the website's "What's New" section (i.e. users will see the HTML source).
Currently (July 2015), HTML escape sequences (• •) do not work in browser version of Play Store, they're displayed as text. Though, Play Store app handles them as expected.
So, if you're after the unicode bullet point in your app/update description [that's what's got you here, most likely], just copy-paste the bullet character
•
PS You can also use unicode input combo to get the character
Linux: CtrlShiftu 2022 Enter or Space
Mac: Hold ⌥ 2022 release ⌥
Windows: Hold Alt 2022 release Alt
Mac and Windows require some setup, read on Wikipedia
PPS If you're feeling creative, here's a good link with more copypastable symbols, but don't go too crazy, nobody likes clutter in what they read.
As a matter of fact, HTML character entites also work : http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/sgml/entities.html.
It lets you insert special characters like bullets '•' (•), '™' (™), ... the HTML way.
Note that you can also (and probably should) type special characters directly in the form fields if you can enter international characters.
=> one consideration here is whether or not you care about third-party sites that collect data on your app from Google Play : some might simply take it as HTML content, others might insert it in a native application that just understand plain Unicode...
This is not bullet but you can consider it. As there is nothing like big dot.
I used below symbol in the description and its working fine.
⚫ Black Circle
🌑 New Moon
🌕 Full Moon
💠 Diamond With a Dot
🔸 Small Orange Diamond
⚙ Gear
🏴 Black Flag
🏳 White Flag
▶ Play Button
⏩ Fast-Forward Button
⭕ Heavy Large Circle
✴ Eight-Pointed Star
◼ Black Medium Square
◽ White Medium-Small Square
◾ Black Medium-Small Square
⬛ Black Large Square
You just need to copy and paste it over description. Below is the result.
Currently (June 2016) typing in the link as http://www.example.com will only produce plain text.
You can now however put in an html anchor :
My Example Site
Title, Short Description and Developer Name
HTML formatting is not supported in these fields, but you can include UTF-8 symbols and Emoji: ✓☆👍
Full Description and What’s New:
For the Long Description and What’s New Section, there is a wider variety of HTML codes you can apply to format and structure your text. However, they will look slightly different in Google Play Store app and web.
Here is a table with codes that you can use for formatting Description and What’s New fields for your app on Google Play (originally appeared on ASO Stack blog):
Also you can refer this..
https://thetool.io/2020/html-emoji-google-play
Include emojis; copy and paste them to the description:
http://getemoji.com
<br> seems to be the best and only way that currently works on the app version to create a new line break. I have tried it successfully in a review, as well as unsuccessfully tried all other Unicode/HTML newline-related characters that the Wikipedia page for newlines would tell me.
I used <br> with | immediately on either side, using no closing tag, and it magically created a single line break without revealing the source or screwing anything up.
TLDR: <br> lets you successfully utilize single line breaks in Google Play app -- unlike everything else I tried (a lot).
P.S. I have no clue how to make the thing show source instead of being used as source. !^( Now I do, and I know it works on both the desktop and mobile sites. !!
Additionally, upon searching for how to make it show the source, I stumbled upon this. <del></del>
I am creating an application, so that need to change multiple font on a text view using multiple font picker. I've read many tutorials and code, but still cannot be able to get this feature. I tried Ted codes, Collaborate code and android lib for getting multiple font.
I need multiple font styles, more than 2-3. Is it possible?
I am maintaining an Android app that people use to display strings in various exotic languages like Tibetan or old Greek. Because Android devices come with very few fonts, users can put font files on the SD card, and the app will use them.
QUESTION: Given a string, how can I automatically decide which font file is the most appropriate, so that this string appears without characters being replaced with squares/boxes?
Notes:
Each string is in one language.
Strings are displayed in a WebView.
Custom fonts work, the only problem is deciding which font file to use.
Instead of a single font, it could provide a list of fonts that are acceptable for that string.
Unnecessary context, for the curious: I am trying to develop this feature:
http://code.google.com/p/ankidroid/issues/detail?id=779
UPDATE: I ended up creating the Antisquare Open Source library based on Mostafa's idea.
It has a getSuitableFonts method which is blazingly fast.
Android by itself does not provide enough for such a task. Loading and rendering fonts in Android happens in Skia, which is written in C. Skia detects if a character can't be found in a font and falls back to another font for such characters (not the whole string). That's how Japanese, Hebrew, or Arabic text is shown in Android and that's exactly why these scripts don't have bold face! (Their font is selected through fallback and fallback only selects one font file.)
Unfortunately, this mechanism is not provided in APIs and you have to build similar thing on your own. It seems complicated, but is easier than it looks. All you have to do is:
Prepare lists of characters available in each font file.
For every string find the font that has more characters of the string.
Getting list of characters in each font
You don't have to do this on-the-fly in your Android app. You can prepare the list of characters in each font and put these lists in your app. I say that because this is way easier with tools that may not be available in Android. I would do that through Python scripting in a font app (most serious font tools have awesome Python scripting environments), but these apps are expensive and are for serious type designers. Since you're an Android developer, I recommend using sfntly, a library in Java and C++. Doing what you need (getting a list of Unicode characters available in a font file) is easy with sfntly. This sample works with CMap tables (tables that hold character to glyph mapping) and should be a good starting point for you.
Now the interesting part is that snftly is in Java and you may be able to include that in your Android app and do everything automatically. That's awesome by I recommend you start by getting familiar with snftly.
Selecting the font
After the previous part you'll have a list of Unicode character for every font, and based on these lists selecting the font file that provides most characters of every string is trivial.