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15 quirky Android XML layout parameters to know

February 4, 2013
 · 
1 min read

After working on Android widgets for the last two years I've learned a lot about limitations, inconsistencies, and ghostly parameters in Android XML layout files. Some parameters are simply "overly clever" so I'll offer some standard settings you should use. These suggestions will also help you effectively reduce the plethora of nanny nag warnings in the IDE.

These come in handy so take a moment to review.

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Comments
Daniel
February 5, 2013 at 7:43 am
You missed one of my most often used quirky XML attributes – ScrollView’s fillViewport. Romain Guy explains it pretty well here: http://www.curious-creature.org/2010/08/15/scrollviews-handy-trick/
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Thomas
February 5, 2013 at 12:35 pm
Another nastiness is lineSpacingMultiplier – as you said, values below 1.0 may give you overlapping in some fonts. What they almost every time give you however are cropped last lines, because the sdkis unable to determine the correct height of such a multi line text view.
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radley
February 5, 2013 at 12:44 pm
I think you can extra padding on the bottom to compensate.
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Thomas
February 5, 2013 at 4:32 pm
No, that was not working for me. The only way to “fix” this problem was to create my own TextView implementation and let this overwrite onMeasure(). I calculated some “magic height value” that I set as new measured dimensions, which then expanded the text’s box accordingly.
George
February 17, 2013 at 4:41 am
FYI textAllCaps is only present on API level 14+. So it won’t work on older Android versions.
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TWiStErRob
August 14, 2015 at 5:24 am
That’s actually a good thing, because the unknown params are ignored on lower API levels. Radley said “follows JellyBean’s all caps text style” so if you’re using that you can be sure it doesn’t contradict an older Android’s design. The problem is if you want to have an all-round-same design you have to write code to convert to all caps for compatibility.
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Vladimir
March 18, 2014 at 5:26 pm
One more attribute: android:clipToPadding. Very useful with ListView
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Karl
March 19, 2014 at 9:47 pm
The plural of ellipse might be ellipses, but that is unrelated to the attribute that decides whether to ellipsize (verb) the text.
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radley
March 30, 2014 at 11:20 am
Ellipsize is not a verb, it’s not even a real word.
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Alan
June 24, 2014 at 5:15 pm
Ellipsize is a neologism (a made up word). But it is definitely a verb. I suppose because it is not found in a dictionary, the author assumed (incorrectly) that it was intended to be the plural of the noun ellipsis. But no, it is a verbification (see, I can make up words, too!) of the noun ellipsis.
Random Teenager
February 19, 2015 at 2:59 pm
I think maybe they were trying to go with “ellip-size”, if they used “ellipsis” or “ellipses” it might be a it confusing as to what the parameter does.
I think when they created the parameter it was supposed to be a merge of “ellipse” and “size”, hence “ellipsize” – the parameter is not relative to size, but can actually be associated with a parameter that affects “size” of the ellipses. Such as having none, etc…
It is probably verbification, but I’m just bringing forward another idea.
Bengalore
April 18, 2014 at 12:27 pm
Thanks a big bunch mate. Your | android:adjustViewBounds=”true” | works like a charm including when applied to an image within a (deprecated) Gallery widget :-).
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Daniel
July 15, 2014 at 9:43 am
keepScreenOn is also not much known.
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Emily
December 4, 2014 at 5:16 pm
Thank you so much for the negative dp idea I was trying so hard to get rid of a space
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Aldo
August 28, 2015 at 7:00 am
Thank you for sharing your deep understanding of quirky android jargons, you just saved my hours of experimenting on weird Android attributes.
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Mateusz
December 9, 2016 at 5:23 am
Thank you for android:includeFontPadding=”false” :)
That solved my problem with stubborn text with ellipsize=”end” that didn’t wanted to center itself vertically. Have a good day!
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