Develop Reference

Is there any way to ellipsize the hint in the EditText?

The length of hint in my EditText is bit longer than the width of ET view. So how can i set marquee attribute to ET view. I have tried setting it, but the app crashes giving the error : E/AndroidRuntime(2095): Caused by: java.lang.IllegalArgumentException: EditText cannot use the ellipsize mode TextUtils.TruncateAt.MARQUEE
I have gone through the docs of ellipsize method, but not getting what i am supposed to do.I have tried these two steps :
1)
android:maxLines="1"
android:ellipsize="marquee"
android:marqueeRepeatLimit="marquee_forever"
2) android:maxLines="1"
android:scrollHorizontally="true"
Docs of ellipsize method:
Causes words in the text that are longer than the view is wide to be ellipsized instead of broken in the middle. You may also want to setSingleLine() or setHorizontallyScrolling(boolean) to constrain the text to a single line. Use null to turn off ellipsizing. If setMaxLines(int) has been used to set two or more lines, only END and MARQUEE are supported (other ellipsizing types will not do anything).
Let me know what modification has to be done so that it works right.Thank you

I think marquee doesn't works for EditText.You can use other attribute to ellipsize hint if it is getting longer than the size of editText.
android:ellipsize="end"

#DJphy - I found a solution no need to set ellipsis. when you are setting the string to edit text just set simple HTML attributes to string.
Played with some HTML tricks and it worked for me.
ex:-
nameEdittxt.setHint(Html.fromHtml("<small><small><small>" + getString(R.string.enter_name) + "</small></small></small>"));
This will help to set hint smaller and Edit text size as normal you had set as fontsize.
Look at my attachments -
Before setting HTML attributes to hint -
After setting HTML attributes to hint -

Android TextView won't show right number of lines in Android 2.3

I have a couple of TextViews in my app, which should have exactly 3 lines. This works on Android 3+, but on Android 2.3, which I'd also like to support, these fields have exactly 2 lines. I've also tried TextView.setLines(3); in code, but that does not seem to help. This is my TextView:
<TextView
d1p1:lines="3"
d1p1:maxLines="3"
d1p1:minLines="3"
d1p1:ellipsize="end"
d1p1:text="Some Text"
d1p1:textAppearance="?android:attr/textAppearanceMedium"
d1p1:layout_width="fill_parent"
d1p1:layout_height="55dp"
d1p1:id="#+id/detailsTextView"
d1p1:layout_below="#+id/locationTextView"
d1p1:textSize="13dp"
d1p1:textColor="#color/app_darkgray"
d1p1:background="#color/app_dark_background"
d1p1:layout_marginLeft="#dimen/sr_horizontal_padding"
d1p1:layout_marginRight="#dimen/sr_horizontal_padding" />
Setting the height to wrap_content also does not work.

After some research it looks like my suspicion is correct. As discussed here (ellipsize multiline textview), Ellipsize causes issues with the min/max lines attributes. Because of this you may want to consider avoiding the Ellipsize otherwise, if that is not an option, you can follow the instructions in the other thread to use a custom TextView class to work around the problem.

How to make the text direction from right to left

I want to write text in (right to left language i.e. Arabic) in a TextView. But I want to make the text writing direction from right to left. gravity:rightwill align the text to right only. I want to justify the text from right to left ( to make the words and numbers appear in he entered order in the line ) . how ?

Another clever way which can be used in older versions of android and can be used anywhere in string so it's handier even in latest version of android, is to include the right-to-left mark or even left-to-right mark in the string when it's needed:
left-to-right mark: ‎ or ‎ (U+200E)
right-to-left mark: ‏ or ‏ (U+200F)
This is how it's down:
String rtl = "Hello \u200F(سلام)";
The good thing about this method is you can even use it after punctuation like (,{,[,! which are positioned right incorrectly! examples:
سلام! // wrong position
سلام!‏ // right position by adding RLM after !
look how ! is positioned correctly in second line, actually there is an RLM after it, and you can copy paste it even if it's invisible.
The second good thing as you saw it is that you can use this method (these char codes) in any system that supports RTL like browsers, word and so on.

Just put this property in your TextView and everything will workout just fine it will automatically detect your text and change accordingly
android:textDirection="anyRtl"

Too late , but the android:gravity="right" worked.

set this line in xml for textview :
android:textDirection="locale"

Try using
textview.setTextDirection(View.TEXT_DIRECTION_RTL);
or
textview.setTextDirection(View.TEXT_DIRECTION_ANY_RTL);

In case of normal edit text this will work
android:textDirection="rtl"
But in case of password fields this is not enough then follow this;
android:textDirection="rtl"
android:gravity="right"

Use android:layoutDirection="rtl" and android:textAlignment="viewStart" to make the text view right-to-left.

try this as it worked for me android:textDirection="rtl"

Add these to your editText:
android:gravity="right"
android:textDirection="rtl"
PS: android:textDirection requires API level 17

just adding my own experience with such issues. in my case in addition to suggested solutions i also had to replace English " character with the RTL (in my case hebrew) representation of such character ״

By using attributes as below in my xml code strangely I got a right to left text with correct punctuation. But this is not a perfect solution for multi language text:
android:textDirection="ltr"
android:gravity="right"
setting ltr corrects punctuation problems like having dot on right side instead of left.
gravity attribute makes text flow from right to left.

best way textDirection for TextView, Don't use layoutDirection
<TextView
android:id="#+id/viewCountTv"
android:layout_width="wrap_content"
android:layout_height="wrap_content"
android:textDirection="anyRtl"
android:gravity="center"/>

how can I display multiple lines of text on a button

My button's layout_width set to match_parent.
In order to display multi lines on the button, I tried:
insert '\n' into the text on button
set Singleline false set Maxlines to 2 or 3
convert html from Html.fromHtml
Nothing worked. '\n' showed up as a small square on the button while showing single line of text.
Does anybody have any idea why this is happening and how I can fix this?
UPDATE: I just found out I was using custom button that has its own text drawing. That's the reason. Sorry for the confusion. I just punished myself by banging my head.

If you're trying to add a new line in a layout XML file:
Use
(new line)
android:text="Hi
Hello"
If you're trying to add a new line in code, just use '\n', same as in any other text.
If you can't see the second line, it may be that your Button doesn't have enough height. IE, in my case, the layout containing the button had a fixed height that just happened to make my button perfectly display one line of text.

I just tried and it worked:
1) Define in ../res/values/strings.xml:
<string name="multilines">Line1Line1\nLine2Line2</string>
2) Refer it in the layout file:
<Button
android:id="#+id/btn_multilines"
android:text="#string/multilines"
android:layout_height="wrap_content"
android:layout_width="fill_parent">
</Button>

In case you want to do that programmaticaly you can use System.getProperty("line.separator") in the string to change lines.
Like this:
String mybuttontext=line1+System.getProperty("line.separator")+line2;
and then set this String as buttons text.

More space between lines in TextView

I have a TextView with about 10 rows. I want to have the lines more separated from each other. I can't seem to find an attribute for doing that. I tried with: android:includeFontPadding="true" but the text got all weird like stretched or something. Is there any attribute that I don't know about to do that?
Thanks in advance.

Use android:lineSpacingMultiplier="1.2" or some number greater than 1

You can use android:lineSpacingExtra="xxdp"