I am programming an app that shows a lot of verses/poems so text wrapping is not an option for me. I would like the text to be as big as possible (doesn't have to recalculate each time a new text is shown, should just allow the biggest text to fit on the screen) without extending screen size. It should not visually scale or take longer for the text to appear.
Is this possible?
Thanks
I would suggest a simple search for the best point size using the largest text that you need to fit. This can be done once at start-up. (Well, maybe twice—once for landscape and once for portrait). The first step would be to initialize a Paint with the typeface you want to use for display. Then call this function to
public void setBestTextSize(String longestText, int targetWidth, Paint paint) {
float size = paint.getTextSize(); // initial size
float w = paint.meaasureText(longestText);
size = targetWidth * size / w;
paint.setTextSize(size);
// test if we overshot
w = paint.measureText(longestText);
while (w > targetWidth) {
--size;
paint.setTextSize(size);
w = paint.measureText(longestText);
}
A binary search in the loop might be theoretically faster, but this should do pretty well since text width does scale approximately linearly with font size and the first step before the loop should get the size pretty close.
An alternative approach, which deals nicely with view size changes, is shown in this thread.
Related
I am learning how to make live wallpapers, but I have a dilemma I'm sure all who start off have as well.
There is so many resolution screen sizes, how can I just make one set of artwork to be rescaled in code for all versions? I know it's been done as I seen the images in the apk's on a lot of them and they get rescaled.
If it was just one image that did not need any positioning that would be easy, but my problem is I have to get the background image rescaled to fit all devices, I also have animations that fit in a certain x and y position on that background image to fit in place so it looks like the whole background is being animated but only parts of it is (my way of staying away from 300 images of frame by frame live wallpapers).
So the background image needs to be rescaled and the animations need to be rescaled as well to the exact percentage as the background image and they need to sit in a specific x and y position.
Any help would be appreciated so I can get this going.
I tired a few things, figured I would make a scaler for everything example: int scaler; then in onSurfaceChanged scaler = width /1024; //if the bigger image is 1024. that will give me a ratio to work with everywhere. then scale accordingly using scaleBitmap by multiplying the scaler by the image height and width, and also use the same scaler for positioning example image x lets say is at 50, scale it using the same thing x = scaler * 50; that should take care of scaling and positioning, just how to translate all this into java is the next lesson, since I'm new to java, I used to program for flash and php but this is a lot different, take some getting used to. Next thing is how to pan the width, when you move your screen from side to side how to make the image show is the next puzzle I have figure out. Right now it just shows the same width no matter what even though the width is double what the surface shows. If you got an answer or somewhere I can find out the info on this one that would be greatly appreciated.
Well, um, all I can say is "Welcome to the real world." You get your screen dimensions passed to you via onSurfaceChanged, and yes, it is your job to figure out how to scale everything based on this data. That's why they pay us the big bucks. :-)
You will want to make sure your resources are large enough to fit the biggest display you intend to support, so you will always be shrinking things (which distorts much less than expanding things).
Suggest starting with "best practices for screen independence" here: http://developer.android.com/guide/practices/screens_support.html
Additional comments in re your request for more help...
You cannot (necessarily) scale your artwork just using the width, because you need to support multiple aspect ratios. If the screen proportions do not match your artwork, you must decide if you want to distort your artwork, leave blank spaces, etc.
I'm not sure how to interpret your trouble passing around the screen dimensions. Most of us put all of our active code within a single engine class, so our methods can share data via private variables. For example, in the Cube wallpaper in the SDK, onSurfaceChanged() sets mCenterX for later use in drawCube(). I suggest beginning with a similar, simple approach.
Handling scrolling takes some "intelligence" and a careful assessment of the data you receive via onOffsetsChanged(). xStep indicates how many screens your launcher supports. Normally xStep will be 0.25, indicating 5 screens (i.e. xOffset = 0, 0.25, 0.5, 0.75, or 1) but it can be any value from 0 to 1; 0.5 would indicate 3 screens. xPixels gives you an indication of how much the launcher "wants" you to shift your imagery based on the screen you're on; normally you should respect this. On my phone, the launcher "desires" a virtual wallpaper with twice the pixels of the physical screen, so each scroll is supposed to shift things only one quarter of one screen's pixels. All this, and more, is documented in http://developer.android.com/reference/android/app/WallpaperManager.html
This is not "easy" coding--apps are easier than wallpaper. :-)
Good luck...George
P.S. I'll throw in one more thing: somewhere along the line you might want to retrieve the "desired minimum width" of the wallpaper desired by the launcher, so you can explicitly understand the virtualization implicit in xPixels. For example, in my engine constructor, I have
mContext = getApplicationContext();
mWM = WallpaperManager.getInstance(mContext);
mDW = mWM.getDesiredMinimumWidth();
My device has 320 pixel width; I get mDW = 640; as I scroll from screen to screen, xPixels changes by 80 each time...because four scrolls (across five screens) is supposed to double the amount of revealed artwork (this effect is called "parallax scrolling"). The rightmost section has xPixels equals 0; the center (of five) sections has xPixels = -160, etc.
I've used this code snippet to scale one image to fit on different screen sizes.
Bitmap image1, pic1;
image1 = BitmapFactory.decodeResource(getResources(), R.drawable.image1);
float xScale = (float) canvas.getWidth() / image1.getWidth();
float yScale = (float) canvas.getHeight() / image1.getHeight();
float scale = Math.max(xScale, yScale); //selects the larger size to grow the images by
//scale = (float) (scale*1.1); //this allows for ensuring the image covers the whole screen.
scaledWidth = scale * image1.getWidth();
scaledHeight = scale * image1.getHeight();
pic1 = Bitmap.createScaledBitmap(image1, (int)scaledWidth, (int)scaledHeight, true);
Make sure that the edges don't contain vital information as it will be scaled out of the picture on some screen ratios.
I am currently working on rendering a Bitmap, that I then want to send to a mobile printer. However, I am struggling with measuring the height of my text, so I can advance the y position appropriately.
My basic bitmap/canvas/paint configuration is this (Font Size is 16 and the dimensions of the bitmap are 200x400 (width x height):
public MyRenderer() {
// Initialize bitmap
bitmap = Bitmap.createBitmap(200, 400, Bitmap.Config.ARGB_8888);
// Initialize canvas
canvas = new Canvas(bitmap);
// Initialize brush (Paint instance)
brush = new Paint();
brush.setTextSize(16);
brush.setTypeface(Typeface.SANS_SERIF);
brush.setColor(Color.BLACK);
brush.setStyle(Paint.Style.FILL);
brush.setAntiAlias(true);
brush.setTextAlign(Align.LEFT);
}
So far so good, now what I want to do is: If I use the Paint's method drawText I need to supply the x and y coordinates. As for x that's zero (assuming left aligned text) but as for y, I'd have to calculate the height of each text I print and add it up, so I can keep track of my current y position.
And this is where it gets odd: I am using the following method to determine the height of a text (using the Paint objected that I initialized previously - it's called "brush"):
public int measureHeight(String text) {
Rect result = new Rect();
// Measure the text rectangle to get the height
brush.getTextBounds(text, 0, text.length(), result);
return result.height();
}
The above method returns the following values for the following texts:
"Hello World" returns a height of 12
"A camera instance can be used to compute 3D transformations and generate a matrix." returns a height of 16
"Introducing Android Design: The place to learn about principles, building blocks, and patterns for creating world-class Android user interfaces. Whether you're a UI professional or a developer playing that role, these docs show you how to make good design decisions, big and small." returns a height of 16
It makes sense to me, that number 2 and 3 return a greater height than number 1 but if one line has a height of 12 (as number one does) - it makes no sense, that multiple lines have a height of 16 ?
Am I missing something here? There is a convenience method for measuring the width of a text (using an instance of paint and call measureText("myText") which works perfectly, however I am quite at a loss, when it comes to the height, as the above given results don't make any sense to me.
EDIT
I am aware, that getTextBounds probably does no auto-wrapping of multi-lined text, and that's ok, I already wrote a method for splitting text, but even if it just measures one line, the above given length values still seem unlikely.
I think it is because the "p" in "compute" extends below the baseline whereas "Hello World" only contains letters that are above the baseline.
Since the line distance should not depend on what specific letters your text happens to consist of you are probably looking for Paint.FontMetrics which can be obtained via Paint.getFontMetrics(). Compute descent - ascent + leading to get the recommended baseline distance (because ascent has a negative value).
There is a small error in the accepted answer. If you want the text height, you should use
Paint.FontMetrics fm = mTextPaint.getFontMetrics();
float textHeight = fm.descent - fm.ascent;
And if you want the line height, you should use
float lineHeight = fm.bottom - fm.top + fm.leading;
Leading is optional interline spacing, so if you need to get the line hight you can include it. But if you just want the text height, then you can leave it off.
Note
I've never actually seen leading be anything else than 0, and as far as I can tell it even seems to be ignored in the TextView source code (and its associated Layout, StaticLayout, etc.). Please correct me if I'm wrong. So it is probably safe it leave it out of line hight calulations, but I'm not completely sure about that.
See also
Getting text height from getTextBounds vs FontMetrics vs StaticLayout
Meaning of top, ascent, baseline, descent, bottom, and leading in Android's FontMetrics
I'm making an app widget for Android, which due to being composed of custom elements such as graphs, must be rendered as a bitmap.
However, I've run into a few snags in the process.
1) Is there any way to find the maximum available space for an app widget? (OR: Is it possible to calculate the dimensions correctly for the minimum space available in WVGA (or similar wide) cases?
I don't know how to calculate the maximum available space for an app widget. With a conventional app widget it is possible to fill_parent, and all the space will be used. However, when rendering the widget as a bitmap, and to avoid stretching, the correct dimensions must be calculated. The documentation outlines how to calculate the minimum dimensions, but for cases such as WVGA, there will be unused space in landscape mode - causing the widget to look shorter than other widgets which stretch naturally.
float density = getResources().getDisplayMetrics().density;
int cx = ((int)Math.ceil(appWidgetInfo.minWidth / density) + 2) / 74;
int cy = ((int)Math.ceil(appWidgetInfo.minHeight / density) + 2) / 74;
int portraitWidth = (int)Math.round((80.0f * cx - 2.0f) * density);
int portraitHeight = (int)Math.round((100.0f * cy - 2.0f) * density);
int landscapeWidth = (int)Math.round((106.0f * cx - 2.0f) * density);
int landscapeHeight = (int)Math.round((74.0f * cy - 2.0f) * density);
Calculating cx and cy gives the number of horizontal and vertical cells. Subtracting - 2 from the calculated dpi (e.g. 74 * cy - 2) is to avoid cases where the resulting number of pixels is rounded down. (For example in landscape mode on Nexus One, the height is 110, not 111 (74 * 1.5).
2) When assigning a bitmap to an ImageView which is used as part of the RemoteViews to view the image, there are 2 methods:
2.1) By using setImageViewUri, and saving the bitmap to a PNG file. The image is then served using an openFile() implementation in a ContentProvider:
#Override
public ParcelFileDescriptor openFile(Uri uri, String mode) throws FileNotFoundException
// Code to set up imageFileName
File file = new File(getContext().getCacheDir(), imageFileName);
return ParcelFileDescriptor.open(file, ParcelFileDescriptor.MODE_READ_ONLY);
}
This works, and it's the approach I'm currently using. However, if I set the scaleType of the ImageView to "center", which by the documentation is supposed to "Center the image in the view, but perform no scaling.", the image is incorrectly scaled. Setting the density of the bitmap to DENSITY_NONE or getResources().getDisplayMetrics().densityDpi doesn't make any difference when saving the bitmap to PNG, it seems to be ignored when the file is loaded by the ImageView. The result is that the image is scaled down, due to some dpi issue. This seems to describe the case:
http://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=6957&can=1&q=widget%20size&colspec=ID%20Type%20Status%20Owner%20Summary%20Stars
Because it is not possible to use scaleType:center, the only way I've found to work is to set the layout_width and layout_height of the ImageView statically to a given number of dpis, then rendering the bitmap to the same dpi. This requires the use of scaleType:fitXY. This approach works, but it is a very static setup - and it will not work for resizable 3.1 app widgets (I haven't tested this yet, but unless onUpdate() is called on each resize, this is true).
Is there any way to load an image to an ImageView unscaled, or is this impossible due to a bug in the framework?
2.1) By using setImageViewBitmap directly. Using this method with the Bitmap.DENSITY_NONE setting on the bitmap, the image can be shown without scaling correctly. The problem with this approach is that there is a limitation to how large images can be set through the IPC mechanism:
http://groups.google.com/group/android-developers/browse_thread/thread/e8d84920b999291f/d12eb1d0eaca93ac#01d5c89e5e7b4060
(not allowed more links)http://groups.google.com/group/android-developers/browse_thread/thread/b11550601e6b1dd3#4bef4fa8908f7e6a
I attempting a bit of a hack to get past this issue, by splitting the widget into a matrix of images which could be set in 100x100 pixel blocks. This did allow for larger widgets to work, but ended up being very heavy and failed on large widgets (4x4).
Sorry for a very long post. I've tried to explain a few of the different issues when attempting to use a bitmap rendered app widget. If anyone has attempted the same and have found any more solutions to these issues, or have any helpful comments, this will be highly appreciated.
An approach that worked for us for a similar situation was to generate our graph as a 9-patch png, with the actual graph part as the scalable central rectangle, and the caption text and indication icons (which we did not want all stretched out of shape) and border effects, placed on the outer rectangles of the image.
I am learning how to make live wallpapers, but I have a dilemma I'm sure all who start off have as well.
There is so many resolution screen sizes, how can I just make one set of artwork to be rescaled in code for all versions? I know it's been done as I seen the images in the apk's on a lot of them and they get rescaled.
If it was just one image that did not need any positioning that would be easy, but my problem is I have to get the background image rescaled to fit all devices, I also have animations that fit in a certain x and y position on that background image to fit in place so it looks like the whole background is being animated but only parts of it is (my way of staying away from 300 images of frame by frame live wallpapers).
So the background image needs to be rescaled and the animations need to be rescaled as well to the exact percentage as the background image and they need to sit in a specific x and y position.
Any help would be appreciated so I can get this going.
I tired a few things, figured I would make a scaler for everything example: int scaler; then in onSurfaceChanged scaler = width /1024; //if the bigger image is 1024. that will give me a ratio to work with everywhere. then scale accordingly using scaleBitmap by multiplying the scaler by the image height and width, and also use the same scaler for positioning example image x lets say is at 50, scale it using the same thing x = scaler * 50; that should take care of scaling and positioning, just how to translate all this into java is the next lesson, since I'm new to java, I used to program for flash and php but this is a lot different, take some getting used to. Next thing is how to pan the width, when you move your screen from side to side how to make the image show is the next puzzle I have figure out. Right now it just shows the same width no matter what even though the width is double what the surface shows. If you got an answer or somewhere I can find out the info on this one that would be greatly appreciated.
Well, um, all I can say is "Welcome to the real world." You get your screen dimensions passed to you via onSurfaceChanged, and yes, it is your job to figure out how to scale everything based on this data. That's why they pay us the big bucks. :-)
You will want to make sure your resources are large enough to fit the biggest display you intend to support, so you will always be shrinking things (which distorts much less than expanding things).
Suggest starting with "best practices for screen independence" here: http://developer.android.com/guide/practices/screens_support.html
Additional comments in re your request for more help...
You cannot (necessarily) scale your artwork just using the width, because you need to support multiple aspect ratios. If the screen proportions do not match your artwork, you must decide if you want to distort your artwork, leave blank spaces, etc.
I'm not sure how to interpret your trouble passing around the screen dimensions. Most of us put all of our active code within a single engine class, so our methods can share data via private variables. For example, in the Cube wallpaper in the SDK, onSurfaceChanged() sets mCenterX for later use in drawCube(). I suggest beginning with a similar, simple approach.
Handling scrolling takes some "intelligence" and a careful assessment of the data you receive via onOffsetsChanged(). xStep indicates how many screens your launcher supports. Normally xStep will be 0.25, indicating 5 screens (i.e. xOffset = 0, 0.25, 0.5, 0.75, or 1) but it can be any value from 0 to 1; 0.5 would indicate 3 screens. xPixels gives you an indication of how much the launcher "wants" you to shift your imagery based on the screen you're on; normally you should respect this. On my phone, the launcher "desires" a virtual wallpaper with twice the pixels of the physical screen, so each scroll is supposed to shift things only one quarter of one screen's pixels. All this, and more, is documented in http://developer.android.com/reference/android/app/WallpaperManager.html
This is not "easy" coding--apps are easier than wallpaper. :-)
Good luck...George
P.S. I'll throw in one more thing: somewhere along the line you might want to retrieve the "desired minimum width" of the wallpaper desired by the launcher, so you can explicitly understand the virtualization implicit in xPixels. For example, in my engine constructor, I have
mContext = getApplicationContext();
mWM = WallpaperManager.getInstance(mContext);
mDW = mWM.getDesiredMinimumWidth();
My device has 320 pixel width; I get mDW = 640; as I scroll from screen to screen, xPixels changes by 80 each time...because four scrolls (across five screens) is supposed to double the amount of revealed artwork (this effect is called "parallax scrolling"). The rightmost section has xPixels equals 0; the center (of five) sections has xPixels = -160, etc.
I've used this code snippet to scale one image to fit on different screen sizes.
Bitmap image1, pic1;
image1 = BitmapFactory.decodeResource(getResources(), R.drawable.image1);
float xScale = (float) canvas.getWidth() / image1.getWidth();
float yScale = (float) canvas.getHeight() / image1.getHeight();
float scale = Math.max(xScale, yScale); //selects the larger size to grow the images by
//scale = (float) (scale*1.1); //this allows for ensuring the image covers the whole screen.
scaledWidth = scale * image1.getWidth();
scaledHeight = scale * image1.getHeight();
pic1 = Bitmap.createScaledBitmap(image1, (int)scaledWidth, (int)scaledHeight, true);
Make sure that the edges don't contain vital information as it will be scaled out of the picture on some screen ratios.
My app that I am trying to create is a board game. It will have one bitmap as the board and pieces that will move to different locations on the board. The general design of the board is square, has a certain number of columns and rows and has a border for looks. Think of a chess board or scrabble board.
Before using bitmaps, I first created the board and boarder by manually drawing it - drawLine & drawRect. I decided how many pixels in width the border would be based on the screen width and height passed in on "onSizeChanged". The remaining screen I divided by the number of columns or rows I needed.
For examples sake, let's say the screen dimensions are 102 x 102.
I may have chosen to set the border at 1 and set the number of rows & columns at 10. That would leave 100 x 100 left (reduced by two to account for the top & bottom border, as well as left/right border). Then with columns and rows set to 10, that would leave 10 pixels left for both height and width.
No matter what screen size is passed in, I store exactly how many pixels in width the boarder is and the height & width of each square on the board. I know exactly what location on the screen to move the pieces to based on a simple formula and I know exactly what cell a user touched to make a move.
Now how does that work with bitmaps? Meaning, if I create 3 different background bitmaps, once for each density, won't they still be resized to fit each devices screen resolution, because from what I read there were not just 3 screen resolutions, but 5 and now with tablets - even more. If I or Android scales the bitmaps up or down to fit the current devices screen size, how will I know how wide the border is scaled to and the dimensions of each square in order to figure out where to move a piece or calculate where a player touched. So far the examples I have looked at just show how to scale the overall bitmap and get the overall bitmaps width and height. But, I don't see how to tell how many pixels wide or tall each part of the board would be after it was scaled. When I draw each line and rectangle myself based in the screen dimensions from onSizeChanged, I always know these dimensions.
If anyone has any sample code or a URL to point me to that I can a read about this with bitmaps, I would appreciate it.
BTW, here is some sample code (very simplified) on how I know the dimensions of my game board (border and squares) no matter the screen size. Now I just need to know how to do this with the board as a bitmap that gets scaled to any screen size.
#Override
protected void onSizeChanged(int w, int h, int oldw, int oldh) {
intScreenWidth = w;
intScreenHeight = h;
// Set Border width - my real code changes this value based on the dimensions of w
// and h that are passed in. In other words bigger screens get a slightly larger
// border.
intOuterBorder = 1;
/** Reserve part of the board for the boardgame and part for player controls & score
My real code forces this to be square, but this is good enough to get the point
across.
**/
floatBoardHeight = intScreenHeight / 4 * 3;
// My real code actually causes floatCellWidth and floatCellHeight to
// be equal (Square).
floatCellWidth = (intScreenWidth - intOuterBorder * 2 ) / intNumColumns;
floatCellHeight = (floatBoardHeight - intOuterBorder * 2) / intNumRows;
super.onSizeChanged(w, h, oldw, oldh);
}
I think I found the answer. I might not be able to find the exact width/height and location of each playable square within a single scaled bitmap, but by looking at the Snake example in the SDK, I see it doesn't create 1 bitmap for the entire board and scale it based on the screen dimensions - instead it creates a bitmap for each tile and then scales the tile based on the screen resolution and the number of tiles wanted on the screen - just like I do when I draw the board manually. With this method, I should be able find the exact pixel boundaries for all of the playable squares on the board. I just have to break the board into multiple bitmaps for each square. I probably will have to do a similar approach for the borders, so I can detect their width/height as well after scaling.
Now I will test it to verify, but I expect it to work based on what I saw in the Snake SDK example.
--Mike
I tested a way to do what I was asking and it seems to work. Here is what I did:
I created a 320 x 320 bitmap for a board. It was made up of a border and squares (like a chess board). The border was 10 pixels in width all the way around the board. The squares were 20 x 20 pixels.
I detected the width and height of the screen through onSizeChanged. On a 480 x 800 display, I would set the new width for the board to be 480 x 480 and use the following code to scale the whole thing:
protected void onSizeChanged(int w, int h, int oldw, int oldh) {
floatBoardWidth = w;
floatBoardHeight = floatBoardWidth;
bitmapScaledBoard = Bitmap.createScaledBitmap(bitmapBoard, (int)floatBoardWidth, (int)floatBoardHeight, true);
super.onSizeChanged(w, h, oldw, oldh);
}
Now in order to detect how many pixels wide the border was scaled to and how many pixels in height & width the squares were scaled to, I first calculated how much the over all image was scaled. I knew the bitmap was 320 x 320, since I created it. I used the following formula to calculate how much the image was scaled:
floatBoardScale = floatScreenWidth / 320;
In the case of a 480 width screen, floatBoardScale equals: 1.5. Then to calculate what my border within the full bitmap was scaled to, I did:
floatBorderWidth = 10 * floatBoardScale;
10 was the original border width in my 320 x 320 bitmap. In my final code I won't hardcode values, I will use variables. Anyway, in the case of this formula, the new calculated border width should be: 15
When I multiplied the same scale factor to the board squares (that were 20 x 20 in the original bitmap) I got new values of 30 x 30. When I used those values in my formulas to calculate what square a person touched, it worked. I touched every corner of the squares and in the center and it always calculated the right location. Which is important, so no matter what the screen resolution, I know where the user wanted to move a piece and visually it shows up in the right location.
I hope this helps anyone who may have had the same question. Also, if anyone has a better method of accomplishing the same thing, please post it.
A couple things. First, start reading about how to support multiple screens. Pay close attention to learning about dips and how they work.
Next, watch this video (at least the first 15-20 minutes of it).
This subject isn't a cakewalk to grasp. I found it best to start playing around inside my code. I would suggest creating a surfaceview and start messing around with some bitmaps, different emulators (screen sizes and densities), and the different types of drawable folders.
Unfortunately, there is more to this topic than I think Google wants to admit, and while it's definitely do-able is isn't simple to get started on it for some types of applications.
Finally, you should consider boiling down your question to be more straight forward if you aren't looking for an abstract answer (like this one).
Good luck!