Line Break in XML formatting?

Question

when editing a String in XML I need to add line breaks. And I wanted to ask what is the RIGHT form when programming for android? Because   works but ECLIPSE marks the area as problematic. If I check out suggestions Eclipse tells me that I shall add a end tag  - IF I add that the line break dissapears...

So the one works but is marked as problematic, the other works not but Eclipse tells me its ok..

What form shall I use?

On a side-note: **Never** use `
`. Explaination: most markup-languages (for xml, html, etc) use `` to open a tag, `` to close a tag and `` is an empty thus has an alternative notation ``. So `
` opens a tag, it's logic the IDE asksed to close with `` but as the br-tag is almost always empty it's advisable to use **`
`**. Anyhow the question was about Java, so `\n` is much better. Using html for a textview works fine but consumes relatively much memory. Only use this it when necessary, if you want a multicolored textview or something like that. — T_D, May 31 '13 at 08:00
See my answer here: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/18938403/how-to-preserve-line-breaks-in-xml-string-resources-in-android/31683548#31683548 — Jin, Jul 28 '15 at 17:46

score 150 · Accepted Answer · edited Sep 24 '16 at 00:12

150

Use \n for a line break and \t if you want to insert a tab.

You can also use some XML tags for basic formatting:  for bold text,  for italics, and  for underlined text.

Other formatting options are shown in this article on the Android Developers' site:
https://developer.android.com/guide/topics/resources/string-resource.html#FormattingAndStyling

edited Sep 24 '16 at 00:12

Ordago

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answered May 20 '10 at 21:11

Christopher Orr

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score 17 · Answer 2 · answered Dec 28 '12 at 12:48

17

If you are refering to res strings, use CDATA with \n.

<string name="about">
    <![CDATA[
 Author: Sergio Abreu\n
 http://sites.sitesbr.net
  ]]>        
</string>

answered Dec 28 '12 at 12:48

Sergio Abreu

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Thank you indeed! – Sergio Abreu Jul 16 '19 at 21:40

Azurespot · Answer 3 · 2015-10-04T02:29:58.373

4

Take note: I have seen other posts that say 
 will give you a paragraph break, which oddly enough works in the Android xml String.xml file, but will NOT show up in a device when testing (no breaks at all show up). Therefore, the \n shows up on both.

edited Oct 04 '15 at 02:29

answered Mar 02 '15 at 05:46

Azurespot

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can you tell us ` ` is what format ? url of its table for all chars may be – shareef Oct 17 '18 at 13:13

mobiledev Alex · Answer 4 · 2011-08-17T21:21:35.030

4

Also you can add instead of \n.

And then you can add text to TexView:

articleTextView.setText(Html.fromHtml(textForTextView));

edited Aug 17 '11 at 21:21

answered Jul 19 '11 at 09:46

mobiledev Alex

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score 2 · Answer 5 · answered Apr 17 '12 at 08:44

Here is what I use when I don't have access to the source string, e.g. for downloaded HTML:

// replace newlines with <br>
public static String replaceNewlinesWithBreaks(String source) {
    return source != null ? source.replaceAll("(?:\n|\r\n)","<br>") : "";
}

For XML you should probably edit that to replace with   instead.

Example of its use in a function (additional calls removed for clarity):

// remove HTML tags but preserve supported HTML text styling (if there is any)
public static CharSequence getStyledTextFromHtml(String source) {
    return android.text.Html.fromHtml(replaceNewlinesWithBreaks(source));
}

...and a further example:

textView.setText(getStyledTextFromHtml(someString));

Line Break in XML formatting?

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