Locate text position in TextView

Question

How can I calculate the position X , Y of a letter in a TextView by knowing it's index? I need this to show a graphical pointer to the touched letter or word but I don't know how to locate the right place.

if you know the index, then maybe x = (Paint.measureText(yourText) / yourText.length()) * index — Boris Mocialov, Aug 05 '13 at 07:29
y = http://stackoverflow.com/questions/9325798/android-textview-and-getting-line-of-text — Boris Mocialov, Aug 05 '13 at 07:35
This is a good question. Shoudnt have been marked negative. Let me know if anybody get an answer to this. — Srujan Barai, Nov 13 '15 at 06:00

score 1 · Accepted Answer · answered Aug 05 '13 at 07:39

1

May this help you:

I am not aware of a simple direct way to do this but you should be able to put something together using the Paint object of the TextView via a call to TextView.getPaint()..

Once you have the paint object you will have access to the underlying FontMetrices via a call to Paint.getFontMetrics() and have access to other functions like Paint.measureText() Paint.getTextBounds(), and Paint.getTextWidths() for accessing the actual size of the displayed text...

answered Aug 05 '13 at 07:39

Bhavin Nattar

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It sounds helpful , Thx – Soheil Setayeshi Aug 05 '13 at 07:43
sure , let me give a try ;) – Soheil Setayeshi Aug 05 '13 at 07:47

score 1 · Answer 2 · answered Aug 05 '13 at 07:43

Try this:

Rect bounds = new Rect();
Paint textPaint = textView.getPaint();
textPaint.getTextBounds(text,0,text.length(),bounds);
int height = bounds.height();
int width = bounds.width();

That should give you the height and width. Create an array of height/widths with a different value for each individual character, you could do it quickly if you used a loop and ASCII character codes. Then, you could add the widths of each character until you get to the one you want.

But there's what I think is an easier way. Instead of a TextView, try a LinearLayout with multiple textviews. If you use a textview for each character, you can just use getX and getY.

Locate text position in TextView

2 Answers2