Styling Two First Words With Spannable String

Question

I am trying to give some style effect (like bold, strikethrough) to the first two words in a string. The way I am doing it is inspired by this thread.

String[] tokens = text.split(" ");
String twoFirstWords = tokens[0] + " " + tokens[1]; //two first words

String content = text.replaceFirst(twoFirstWords, " "); //the rest

SpannableStringBuilder builder = new SpannableStringBuilder();
SpannableString span1 = new SpannableString(twoFirstWords);
SpannableString span2 = new SpannableString(content);
span1.setSpan(new StyleSpan(Typeface.BOLD), 0, twoFirstWords.length(), Spanned.SPAN_EXCLUSIVE_INCLUSIVE);
span1.setSpan(new StrikethroughSpan(),0, twoFirstWords.length(), Spanned.SPAN_EXCLUSIVE_INCLUSIVE );
span1.setSpan(new CustomTypefaceSpan("", fontFirst), 0, twoFirstWords.length(), Spanned.SPAN_EXCLUSIVE_INCLUSIVE);
span2.setSpan(new CustomTypefaceSpan("", fontContent), 0, content.length(), Spanned.SPAN_EXCLUSIVE_INCLUSIVE);

builder.append(span1);
builder.append(span2);
textView.setText(builder, TextView.BufferType.SPANNABLE);

Based on code above, I am trying to give BOLD and Strikethrough effect only to the two first words.. However, those effects are also applied to the content.

This code worked fine when I applied style for two last words in a string, but keep failing when using first words. I suspect this is because of wrong start and end of .SetSpan (Or maybe that is not the case)... I am also still clueless at finding the right index for start and end.. Anyone can help me to fix this issue? Thank you.

omg. it works .. thank you. one upvote for you :) anyway.. what does EXCLUSIVE_EXCLUSIVE and EXCLUSIVE_INCLUSIVE mean? — Lynx, Jun 29 '15 at 09:17
see http://stackoverflow.com/questions/16531555/what-is-the-difference-between-span-point-mark-and-span-mark-point — pskink, Jun 29 '15 at 09:27

score 0 · Answer 1 · answered Jun 29 '15 at 08:48

0

Yes, you can do this. The way I'd do this (since it's relatively simple stuff) is just with HTML. So you can do something like this...

TextView textView = (TextView) findViewById(R.id.textView); 

textView.setText(Html.fromHtml("<b><strike>" + twoFirstWords 
    + "</b></strike>" +  restOfTheSentence));

CommonsWare has a great blog post that list all of the tags that this supports that you can find here.

answered Jun 29 '15 at 08:48

Alex K

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Thank you for the comment. Right now, my majority of code is full of using Spannable String... So I really wanna know how to fix it using spannable string. If you know how, it will help a lot. Thank you for commenting here! :) – Lynx Jun 29 '15 at 08:54
@Lynx Sure. Then, you'd want to create one string, then set the spans for individual sections. I don't think you can combine two spans by appending them the way you did in your question. – Alex K Jun 29 '15 at 08:57

score 0 · Accepted Answer · answered Jun 29 '15 at 09:22

Ok, we have a conclusion. Thanks to pskink!

What I need to do, so the effect is not applied to content is using SPAN_EXCLUSIVE_EXCLUSIVE. Like below:

span1.setSpan(new StyleSpan(Typeface.BOLD), 0, twoFirstWords.length(), Spanned.SPAN_EXCLUSIVE_EXCLUSIVE);

Styling Two First Words With Spannable String

2 Answers2