Retaining whitespaces in textview in android

Question

I am trying to format(add styling) to some text using html and setting that as a text for a textview

Spanned text =Html.fromHtml(""+newAllText);
hello.setText(text, TextView.BufferType.SPANNABLE);

But the Html() method returns Spanned string with all the white spaces removed. I have tried using html tags such a <pre> but it didn't help..

It is supposed to be shown nicely like this (the html tags was later removed with the from Html() method) but instead all the white spaces are removed and it looks like this (when it is set as text in the ui it looks like one big continuous paragraph).

Anyone has any clue on this?

Just in case if anyone wants to see the full code:

String SelectedSentence =allText.substring(lastPoint, nextPoint);
String highlighted = "<font color='red'>"+SelectedSentence+"</font>";
StringBuilder newAllText = new StringBuilder(allText);
newAllText.delete(lastPoint, nextPoint+1);
newAllText.insert(lastPoint,highlighted);
newAllText = new StringBuilder("<pre>"+newAllText+"</pre>");

Spanned text =Html.fromHtml(""+newAllText);
hello.setText(text, TextView.BufferType.SPANNABLE); 
lastPoint = nextPoint;

Deleting previous question and asking it again is not a good idea. If someone knows, he/she will answer. you just need to wait. — harshit, Sep 11 '12 at 05:13
please refer this site so you can find what all HTML tags are supported by TEXT VIEW http://commonsware.com/blog/Android/2010/05/26/html-tags-supported-by-textview.html — Athul Harikumar, Sep 11 '12 at 05:18
@droidhot Good List! Too bad for me that there are not anything useful.. I think I will try android's Webview api Instead. — user1602020, Sep 11 '12 at 06:29
@user1602020 sorry only those tags specified are supported in android text view cant help with that — Athul Harikumar, Sep 11 '12 at 06:32
@droidhot I know that the tags in the links are only for textview. I am just trying out webview as suggested in other posts. — user1602020, Sep 11 '12 at 07:02
yap thats right of course you can use a webview which soupports all HTML tags — Athul Harikumar, Sep 11 '12 at 07:06

score 0 · Answer 1 · answered Sep 12 '12 at 01:27

Alright, I drop this whole method of HTML text styling and just used SpannableStringBuilder to get the same effect I wanted

            highlighted = new SpannableStringBuilder(sb);
            highlighted.removeSpan(new BackgroundColorSpan(Color.YELLOW));
            highlighted.setSpan(new BackgroundColorSpan(Color.YELLOW),lastPoint, nextPoint, 0);

Retaining whitespaces in textview in android

1 Answers1