How do I make layouts render with correct layout-direction-configuration in Android Widgets? I have a layout that successfully supports RTL and LTR when rendered in an activity, but when put in a widget it is forced LTR. Any secret to this, or does widgets simply not support RTL-configuration?
Set this attibute in parent layout:
android:layoutDirection="ltr"
Related
I am developing an app which supports two languages: English("en") and Persian("fa"). I have set android:supportsRtl="false" in AndroidManifest.xml since I need everything to be from left to right. I set margins for all views that I have but for the ones containing a string, it is not working right and it still seems like it is setting the directions from right to left. How can I fix that? I also tried changing the layoutDirection manually to left to right but that did not work either.
You must handle your locale in all activities. Android by default uses the locale of the device to select the appropriate language dependent resources.
Also you must consider project minimum sdk. I recommended to you change it to 16 or higher: minSdkVersion 16
Maybe this link help you.
I set margins for all views that I have but for the ones containing a string, it is not working right
For this for example you must use from android:layout_marginEnd instead of android:layout_marginRight. Also in default create your layout for en locale and then handle and change it by app locale to fa or another locale.
You have to use instead of the right from the end and instead of the left from the start
<TextView
android:layout_width="wrap_content"
android:layout_height="wrap_content"
android:text="تست"
android:gravity="start"/>
I set android:supportsRtl="true" in the <application> tag in AndroidManifest.xml, but I need to force one of the views to be left-to-right nonetheless, even when the language of the interface is Hebrew or Arabic. How can I force a specific view to be LTR in an RTL application?
Specifically, I want to force some linear layout to go left-to-right instead of the default right-to-left even when the language is right-to-left.
Generally gravity="left" is enough to force text to be left-to-right. But it didn't help with the direction of a linear layout. The solution was to add android:layoutDirection="ltr".
<LinearLayout
android:layout_width="match_parent"
android:layout_height="wrap_content"
android:layoutDirection="ltr">
for letf to right all layout content.
To complete the answers, aside from XML, layout direction can also be changed programmatically with ViewCompat.setLayoutDirection(view, LayoutDirection.RTL). This API can be used from API 19 and onwards, so If your min sdk version supports API below 19, an if-check needs to be performed:
if (Build.VERSION.SDK_INT >= Build.VERSION_CODES.KITKAT) {
ViewCompat.setLayoutDirection(...)
If you want to force your application to ltr even on rtl languages you don't need layout direction (it works on api>17) you can just set android:supportsRtl to false.
This question already has answers here:
What is the difference between Android margin start/end and right/left?
(3 answers)
Closed 5 years ago.
So I am comfortable with using relative layouts, but whilst getting used to Android Studio I noticed that in my relative layout child views it generated both of the following.
android:layout_alignParentLeft="true"
android:layout_alignParentStart="true
I have checked out the Android docs here, but cannot see a distinction between the two. Certainly swapping one for another in the Android Studio shows no visible difference. Is there one?
It depends on the layout direction. The layout direction can be either left-to-right (start = left, end = right), or right-to-left (vice versa).
By default, the layout direction is based on the locale (left-to-right for languages like English, right-to-left for languages like Arabic), but you can override it with the layoutDirection XML attribute or setLayoutDirection function. e.g.:
android:layoutDirection="ltr"
^ will make alignParentStart equivalent to alignParentLeft on all devices.
android:layoutDirection="rtl"
^ will make alignParentStart equivalent to alignParentRight on all devices. You can also set to "locale" to use the locale or "inherit" to inherit the layout direction from the parent view.
You need to add android:supportsRtl="true" to your AndroidManifest.xml to support right-to-left layouts.
also related: android:textDirection
android:layout_alignParentStart="true"
Aligns the start edge of this view to the start edge of its parent. This is the left edge for LTR (left to right) locales and the right one on RTL (right to left) locale languages like Arabic, Hebrew, Persian etc.
The reason Android Studio also adds
android:layout_alignParentLeft="true"
to your views is to support older platforms that came before 4.2.x Jelly Bean. The Start/End attributes like layout_alignParentStart are only available from API 17 onwards. The newer platforms fallback to Left/Right attributes only if the corresponding Start/End attributes are not found.
In case, your application supports legacy platforms using android:minSdkVersion below level 17 you must always provide Left/Right attributes for your views. Otherwise the project won't compile with an error message like
To support older versions than API 17 (project specifies 7)
you should also add android:layout_alignParentLeft="true"
Also note that your Android application needs to declare its support for RTL locales within your AndroidManifest.xml as well.
<application
...
android:supportsRtl="true"
/>
These "xxxStart", "xxxEnd" attribute is to support RTL(Right to Left) layout in some locales.
Such as
android:paddingStart
android:paddingEnd
android:layout_marginStart
android:layout_marginEnd
...
You can see more here about it.
In normal(left to right) layout, "xxxStart" means "xxxLeft" and "xxxEnd" means "xxxRight".But in Right to Left layout, "xxxStart" means "xxxRight" and "xxxEnd" means "xxxLeft".
But RTL is only supported on sdk 17 and higher.
To support lower sdk, you can use "android:layout_marginStart" along with "android:layout_marginLeft". At the lower sdk devices, "android:layout_marginLeft" will be used.
I have a styled TextView whose real text is populated dynamically at runtime. The Graphical Layout view is very useful for getting a feel on how this component works with others in terms of look and feel, etc. There is no sensible default to this text field and I wish it to be blank before being populated. If I don't specify any text in the TextView declaration then the TextView is blank. I can set the text manually using:
<TextView
...
android:text="Preview text"/>
and then switch to the Graphical Layout. However, I must remember to remove this or risk it being shipped in my production version.
Is there a way to specify text which is only seen in the Graphical Layout preview but not applicable at runtime?
EDIT: I'm using Eclipse ADT.
Yes you can with the design tools extension attributes in Android Studio.
See this page https://developer.android.com/studio/write/tool-attributes.html
Basically you define the tools namespace
xmlns:tools="http://schemas.android.com/tools"
Then use it to set your placeholder text.
<EditText
tools:text="John Doe"
android:layout_width="wrap_content"
android:layout_height="wrap_content" />
This actually works with most (if not all xml attributes).
e.g
tools:visibility="gone"
would set the preview visibility to "gone" but the runtime visibility would be unchanged.
I don't believe there is, the only possible way is when you declare your TextView, you say after, tv.setText(""); this way you will always find it blank at runtime
I need to add localization features to my app for RTL languages (hebrew and arabic)
How can I modify the layout in order for the picture to be aligned differently in the RTL option?
For example: in the main menu I got buttons on the left side and pic on the right (in the LTR version) I need to reverse it and not only change the pictures
find the localization label for RTL languages then save their custom layout xml files under the folder "res/layout-RtlLabel/customLayout.xml". For example "layout-fr"... look here for more info
you can use
android:layoutDirection="locale"
android:layout_width="wrap_content"
android:layout_height="wrap_content"