Database Users

[Q] ScrollView, SetText and scrollTo

Hi,
Im just getting into Android development and picking up pace slowly. Getting confused how people are getting settings style menus with the appropriate colour Summary Line while adding icons for Stars and Checkboxes etc to highlight and tick.
Anyhoo, I have a TextViews inside a LinearLayout inside a ScrollView, seems to work OK. I use SetText to set the Text on the TextViews and I create everything at run time instead of through the XML files.
But the application I have is a polling type application and I need to repopulate the TextViews and redraw the ScrollView in the same position that the user scrolled to previously.
Im accutely aware of problems using ScrollTo after you've used SetText, so I found the following code:
Code:
sView.post(new Runnable() {
public void run() {
sView.scrollTo(0, iTop);
}
});
It works, but there's a screen flicker where it first draws the screen in its normal position then sets the scrollTo.
What is the best way of achieving this, or am I doing everything completely backwards and most normal people wouldn't have this kind of problem?
Thanks
Simon

It sounds more like you might want to consider using a listview instead. It was designed to contain several child views and scrolls and updates seamlessly.

Hi,
Thanks for the reply. Perhaps I am a bit too much of a beginner.
I seem to be favouring TableLayout so that I can display tabular data and have columns resize correctly and have the data presented OK.
I think that's why I went with updating everything at design time because I have a variable number of rows that can be added. IIUC, variable rows (in an XML file) I think can only be created using ListView, but of course a TableRow needs a TableLayout as a parent.
Here is the idea...
Code:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<TableLayout android:id="@+id/TableLayout01" android:layout_width="fill_parent" android:layout_height="fill_parent" xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"><TableRow android:id="@+id/TableRow01" android:layout_width="wrap_content" android:layout_height="wrap_content">
<TextView android:text="@+id/TextView01" android:paddingRight="5px" android:id="@+id/TextView01" android:layout_width="wrap_content" android:layout_height="wrap_content"></TextView>
<TextView android:text="@+id/TextView02" android:id="@+id/TextView02" android:layout_width="wrap_content" android:layout_height="wrap_content"></TextView>
</TableRow>
</TableLayout>
The code I have for TableRows is not dissimilar to, http://en.androidwiki.com/wiki/Dynamically_adding_rows_to_TableLayout
But of course using setText means I cannot then scrollTo

Duh.
First learning curve mastered.
You only need to add views to containers etc the first time you display the screen.
You can update the text in the views later on without affecting the screen position.
I like this.

[Q]GoogleMap as Overlay on SurfaceView

hey guys,
I have a little problem with my app.
This is what my app does (should do):
I have a SurfaceView which shows the camera "preview".
On top of this surfaceview I want to display a map, so the user can see where he is. So I want sort of a minimap.
To display the fragment/GoogleMap object on top of the surface, I use the following main_activity.xml:
Code:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<RelativeLayout
xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
android:layout_width="match_parent"
android:layout_height="match_parent" >
<FrameLayout
android:id="@+id/SurfaceViewLayout"
android:layout_width="fill_parent"
android:layout_height="fill_parent"
android:src="@drawable/ic_launcher" />
<fragment
android:id="@+id/Map"
android:layout_width="wrap_content"
android:layout_height="wrap_content"
class="com.google.android.gms.maps.MapFragment" />
</RelativeLayout>
My problem is: The app shows the surface and the map, but I can only see the +/- Buttons of the map. The map is not visible. See attachments for a screenshot.
As you can see, the buttons are displayed, but not the map
Does anyone has an idea?
regards,
v1r0x

You prob either have the wrong api key, didnt declare in the manifest, or have god awful service haha.
95% chance it has to do with the api key though, so double check your have the v2 key, and have it in the right spots.
---------- Post added at 05:19 AM ---------- Previous post was at 05:16 AM ----------
You prob either have the wrong api key, didnt declare in the manifest, or have god awful service haha.
95% chance it has to do with the api key though, so double check your have the v2 key, and have it in the right spots.
EDIT: well maybe it could be a weird layout thing, so to check, take out the framelayout and run it. If the map pops up, its something else.

Oh sorry, I forgot to mention, that without the framelayout or if I define
Code:
android:layout_above="@+id/map
in the FrameLayout, I see the map. So, it's not an api key error.
What I don't understand is, that the buttons (+/- in the screenshot) pop up, but not the map
But thanks for your answer

Try setting a width and height for the fragment and maybe exchange their order in the layout. Something like 64dp. (Just for testing)
I think that one is drawn over the other so that you do not see the other one. The buttons are drawn on the top of everything.

nikwen said:
Try setting a width and height for the fragment and maybe exchange their order in the layout. Something like 64dp. (Just for testing)
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The map is 200dp x 200dp
nikwen said:
The buttons are drawn on the top of everything.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Didn't know that. Thanks.

v1r0x said:
The map is 200dp x 200dp
Didn't know that. Thanks.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Have you tried changing their order?
The second view should be drawn behind the first one if nothing else is specified.

I thought the second view will be drawn on top of the first
Now it looks as it should
There are some new bugs, but I think they are related to the new layout.
Thank you, guys!

v1r0x said:
I thought the second view will be drawn on top of the first
Now it looks as it should
There are some new bugs, but I think they are related to the new layout.
Thank you, guys!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Great. :good:

Noob layout issue - probably VERY EASY!!

I'm essentially trying to create a MadLibs app for my kids. I'll type in the text of the books they already have and they can play with it in the car. But I'm a noob and I haven't done much else other than the first few simple apps in tutorials - my brain got tired trying to figure out sqlite stuff, so this all went on the backburner and now here I am again giving it another effort.
So I was thinking something ridiculously simple, like just having a textview string of the first part of a sentence, then an edittext with a hint set for the type of word to fill in, followed by the rest of the sentence in another textview string. Lather, rinse, repeat. Easy, right?
I can't seem to figure out how to get the objects to flow properly in the layout... First problem is that the edittext is gigantic compared to the textview. I could probably figure that one out easy enough, but my second problem prevents me from actually seeing the effects of my changes, and that problem is that the text doesn't flow onto the next line.
I've tried linearlayout and relativelayout, but I'm turning here for some guidance before I waste countless hours. Should I just build each paragraph (textview) as a single string comprised of other strings and edittext variables?
Any help would be great appreciated. And remember: go easy on me.
Here's my current activity_main.xml:
Code:
<LinearLayout xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
xmlns:tools="http://schemas.android.com/tools"
android:layout_width="match_parent"
android:layout_height="wrap_content"
android:paddingBottom="@dimen/activity_vertical_margin"
android:paddingLeft="@dimen/activity_horizontal_margin"
android:paddingRight="@dimen/activity_horizontal_margin"
android:paddingTop="@dimen/activity_vertical_margin"
tools:context=".MainActivity"
android:orientation="horizontal">
<TextView
android:id="@+id/textView1"
android:layout_width="wrap_content"
android:layout_height="wrap_content"
android:text="@string/textBody01"
android:weight="1" />
<EditText
android:id="@+id/editText1"
android:layout_width="wrap_content"
android:layout_height="wrap_content"
android:ems="10"
android:hint="@string/hint_adjective"
android:weight="1" >
<requestFocus />
</EditText>
<TextView
android:id="@+id/textView2"
android:layout_width="wrap_content"
android:layout_height="wrap_content"
android:text="@string/textBody02"
android:weight="1"/>
</LinearLayout>

etnpnys said:
I'm essentially trying to create a MadLibs app for my kids. I'll type in the text of the books they already have and they can play with it in the car. But I'm a noob and I haven't done much else other than the first few simple apps in tutorials - my brain got tired trying to figure out sqlite stuff, so this all went on the backburner and now here I am again giving it another effort.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Could you post a quick picture (just a rough one in paint or something) showing the desired layout ?

Absolutely. I'll mock one up and get it on here shortly.
Sent from my SPH-L710 using Tapatalk

PicomatStudios said:
Could you post a quick picture (just a rough one in paint or something) showing the desired layout ?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Here's a little bit of how I'm thinking this should work out pretty easily. In the end, I would like to have the filled-in words in bold red text and the rest of the body paragraphs as regular black text, and I would like to make the background black to hide the body of text. I would then have a button that calls a function to change the background to white to make the body text visible "onclick" -- or maybe toggle between black/white/whatever.
The first hurdle is right here with the layout. I mean, this is REALLY simple, right?
View attachment 2380717

etnpnys said:
Here's a little bit of how I'm thinking this should work out pretty easily. In the end, I would like to have the filled-in words in bold red text and the rest of the body paragraphs as regular black text, and I would like to make the background black to hide the body of text. I would then have a button that calls a function to change the background to white to make the body text visible "onclick" -- or maybe toggle between black/white/whatever.
The first hurdle is right here with the layout. I mean, this is REALLY simple, right?
View attachment 2380717
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Maybe not that simple
As I understand it you want the text to flow continuously left-to-right, top-to-bottom, a bit like floating CSS layouts ?
That is you might want it to do...
Mary had a [edit text] lamb. Its
fleece was white as snow.
Where that's 2 TextViews with an EditText between them ?
You will struggle to do that on Android, since there is not built in concept of 'flow' as you may be imagining.
The closest you will get is a RelativeLayout but you'll have to work hard to line the views up correctly.
You could try something like this, or maybe this. The second one links here where there is somebody's FlowLayout code towards the end of the page. I haven't tried it but it looks close to what you need at first glance. The concept appears to be a ViewGroup which calculates where its children should be and positions them accordingly.

You get my ideas exactly. I'll look into those! Much appreciated!
Sent from my SPH-L710 using Tapatalk

Just to button this up, I wanted to chime in to let everybody know which direction I went.
Basically, I have a vertical linear layout comprised of:
several editText fields for user input. @hint points to strings that indicate what kind of word (noun, adjective, etc) needs to be filled in.
a "Create" button
a "Clear" button
a textView
Behind the scenes, I set a series of "sentenceFragment" variables that contain the body text. Those all end with a "[" and start with a "]" so that the filled-in words can be easily seen once the story is built. Users fill in the editText fields and click the "Create" button. When clicked, I used getText on each of the editTexts to store each as a string, then a "paragraph" variable is built from concatenating all of the sentenceFragments + editTexts, then I used setText to the textView to display the entire story below.
The "Clear" button then uses setText on the textView and the editTexts to blank them out.
So, in the end, the user is presented with stuff like:
Sometimes you just want to get a [green] car. In your search, you find several [bugs] on the seat.
Thanx for you help, everybody! Now I'm looking into putting a spinner at the top to let the user select different stories... Anybody wanna point me in the right direction there?

[Q] Beginner: Issues with canvas bitmaps, buttons, and layouts

[Q] Beginner: Issues with canvas bitmaps, buttons, and layouts
Hi, I'm hoping people might help me with this more open-ended question. I'm fairly new to programming with little scripting experience.
My problem is that I'm cobbling code together from various separate examples, but trying to implement them into my tests, they don't seem to work together.
Let me show you what my goals are for this experiment:
1) Create Button
2) Generate Images with Button click
3) Drag Images around
So far, I've been able to do create images with drawing bitmaps using canvas and create a working button with the easy drag and drop.
My specific problem is that I can't use the Design tool to create buttons if I use the canvas method of drawing bitmaps because setContentView() needs to be on the canvas.
Here's my onCreate():
Code:
GenerateItem ourView;
Button genButton;
LinearLayout myLinearLayout;
@Override
protected void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {
super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);
ourView = new GenerateItem(this);
setContentView(ourView);
myLinearLayout = (LinearLayout)findViewById(R.id.linearLayout1);
genButton = new Button(this);
genButton.setText("Generate");
myLinearLayout.addView(genButton);
}
And related XML code from my AndroidManifest:
Code:
<LinearLayout xmlns:android="somelink"
android:id="@+id/linearLayout1"
android:layout_width="wrap_content"
android:layout_height="wrap_content" >
</LinearLayout>
Now I have two questions:
1) Am I going about this problem the correct way using a mix of Design layout tools and code created images (canvas bitmaps)?
2) Can I use canvas bitmaps with an onTouchListener as a button?

Whoaness said:
2) Can I use canvas bitmaps with an onTouchListener as a button?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You should use an ImageView instead. Canvas aren't Views, so they aren't managed by the Android System when an event occurs. Canvas are used, for example, to draw anything in a low-level-way (custom views, for example).
I didn't understand the first question..
Sent from my Vodafone 875

Andre1299 said:
You should use an ImageView instead. Canvas aren't Views, so they aren't managed by the Android System when an event occurs. Canvas are used, for example, to draw anything in a low-level-way (custom views, for example).
I didn't understand the first question..
Sent from my Vodafone 875
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You might have answered my first question. I'm not sure.
I was asking whether I should stick with canvas methods and, from my limited scripting knowledge, draw a hitbox for the onTouch method to detect so I can redraw the object to the fingers position.
I can easily drag imageviews/imagebuttons around. I guess I have to figure out how to create Imageviews, though I think I seen a way to cast bitmaps into an imageview, but it never worked out for me.

Whoaness said:
You might have answered my first question. I'm not sure.
I was asking whether I should stick with canvas methods and, from my limited scripting knowledge, draw a hitbox for the onTouch method to detect so I can redraw the object to the fingers position.
I can easily drag imageviews/imagebuttons around. I guess I have to figure out how to create Imageviews, though I think I seen a way to cast bitmaps into an imageview, but it never worked out for me.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Uhm... so, let me know wheter I understood.
In your project you have a button that renders an image (a bitmap) wich is drawn with a canvas. But you want that this image is draggable.
Am I right?

Andre1299 said:
Uhm... so, let me know wheter I understood.
In your project you have a button that renders an image (a bitmap) wich is drawn with a canvas. But you want that this image is draggable.
Am I right?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yes, draggable image button. Although I'm not sure if it needs to be a button, but I thought button properties would be appropriate for touch and dragging.
Sorry for the late reply. I was on a hiatus.

Help with apktool, Android Manifest, and making an activity exportable

Thin ice here...
So here's an excerpt from the Android Manifest.xml of Alreader 1.7.7:
Code:
<activity android:configChanges="locale|touchscreen|keyboard|keyboardHidden|navigation|orientation|uiMode|screenSize|smallestScreenSize|fontScale"
android:label="@string/dialogopen_library"
android:launchMode="singleTop"
android:name="com.neverland.alr.AlReader3GridCatalog"
android:parentActivityName="com.neverland.alr.AlReader3Activity"/>
The activity "com.neverland.alr.AlReader3GridCatalog" is, as far as I can tell, what calls the Library. At least ADW Launcher thinks so, although attempting to create a shortcut fails. In fact, every activity listed for Alreader fails from outside the app as far as I can tell. I would like to be able to go straight to the Library. My reading--probably insufficient--leads me to think that "android:exportable=true" needs to be added somewhere in this mess to make that possible.
I've tried that but apktool throws out all kinds of errors when trying to recompile the app.
Am I being too simple?

nmyshkin said:
"android:exportable=true" needs to be added somewhere...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Make that:
Code:
android:exported="true"
You could also add your own intent filter:
Code:
<intent-filter>
<action android:name="android.intent.action.MAIN"/>
<category android:name="android.intent.category.LAUNCHER"/>
</intent-filter>
Which turns it into a regular launchable app.
It also makes the android:exported="true" by default without the explicit line.

Renate NST said:
Make that:
Code:
android:exported="true"
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
OK, so that was just a stupid mistake on my part I actually did use "exported" when I tried, but apparently my apktool version was just too old. I got the app to recompile with the newest version of apktool, adding android:exported="true" to the section where the library activity is mentioned. So far, so good. Then I signed the app and it actually installed!
When I call the activity I actually get a blank screen with a little band at the top which says "Library" (android sarcasm). The menu button brings up a few items, each of which tosses me back out except for a screen formatting option: one or two columns, etc.
So...I'm guessing that more of the activities associated with the Library need the same treatment in the Android Manifest file for the whole shebang to work.
Edit: just to be a bit OCD, I added the exported phrase to each and every activity mentioned. This yields a similar result for each: a blank page with a title bar and some menu-button options that don't work. I am trying:
Code:
am start -n com.neverland.alreader/con.neverland.alr.AlReader3GridCatalog
as an example. I am wondering if the declaration of a "parent activity" in each section:
Code:
<activity android:configChanges="fontScale|keyboard|keyboardHidden|locale|navigation|orientation|screenSize|smallestScreenSize|touchscreen|uiMode"
android:label="@string/dialogopen_library"
android:launchMode="singleTop"
android:name="com.neverland.alr.AlReader3GridCatalog" android:exported="true" [B]android:parentActivityName="com.neverland.alr.AlReader3Activity[/B]"/>
has something to do with my inability to get to a specific activity from outside the app.

nmyshkin said:
I am wondering if the declaration of a "parent activity"...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
parentActivityName really only has to do with navigation, not a real dependency.