How to prevent hard line feed in XAML Editor.Text?

Question

I've searched the Web for a solution but could not find one. I have a construct like the following:

<Editor IsReadOnly="True" >
    <Editor.Text>
        This is a lot of text.
        So much text that I want to break it onto two or more lines in my XAML.
    </Editor.Text>
</Editor>

The problem is that Xamarin keeps that line feed between text. and So as a hard line feed in the Editor. Is there any way to prevent that and have all the text flow as though it was specified on one line? It's not the end of the world -- I can live with one long line of XAML text, but it is inconvenient.

Thanks.

Use resource file or bind to a string property? – Shaw Jun 03 '21 at 01:44 — Shaw, Jun 03 '21 at 01:44

Leo Zhu · Accepted Answer · 2021-06-04T01:36:21.520

You could process the Text content to remove \n and remove excess spaces.

Here is a sample for Android (using CustomRenderer).The similar method for iOS.

in your Android project:

[assembly: ExportRenderer(typeof(Editor), typeof(AndroidEditorRenderer))]
namespace xxxx
{
  class AndroidEditorRenderer:EditorRenderer
  {
    public AndroidEditorRenderer(Context context) : base(context)
    {

    }

    protected override void OnElementChanged(ElementChangedEventArgs<Editor> e)
    {
        base.OnElementChanged(e);
        var str = Control.Text.Replace("\n", "", StringComparison.OrdinalIgnoreCase);
        string[] ss = str.Split(' ');
        StringBuilder stringBuilder = new StringBuilder();

        foreach (var item in ss)
        {
            if (!string.IsNullOrEmpty(item))
            {
                stringBuilder.Append(item+" ");
            }
            
        }
        string content = stringBuilder.ToString().Substring(0,stringBuilder.Length-1);
        Control.Text = content;
    }
  }
}

Update,do this in your page constructor.

public partial class YourPage: ContentPage
{
    public YourPage
    {
        InitializeComponent();
        refill();
    }

    private void refill()
    {
        var str2 = editor.Text.Replace("\n", "");
        string[] ss = str2.Split(' ');
        StringBuilder stringBuilder = new StringBuilder();

        foreach (var item in ss)
        {
            if (!string.IsNullOrEmpty(item))
            {
                stringBuilder.Append(item + " ");
            }

        }
        string content = stringBuilder.ToString().Substring(0, stringBuilder.Length - 1);
        editor.Text = content;
    }
}

Well, I can't deny that that is an answer. I was kind of hoping for something more "XAML" but this is an answer. Question: why does it have to be a device-specific renderer? Why couldn't I do this in the page constructor? — Charles, Jun 03 '21 at 19:45
@Charles You can also do this in the page constructor by fetching Editor.text, processing it and re-assigning it. Using the renderer, you can reuse the Editor without having to do anything in the page. — Leo Zhu, Jun 04 '21 at 01:18

How to prevent hard line feed in XAML Editor.Text?

1 Answers1