Why does TextView in single line elipsized with “end” show boxes?

Question

I\'m using a TextView in Android, what I want to show 1 line in TextView ending with \". \" but this give [] type box at the end. I don\'t know why? I just want to remvoe t

Answer 1

Actually I was running into this issue and instead of changing the font or using setText I just added scrollHorizontally as false and it fixed the extra box character

android:singleLine="true"
android:scrollHorizontally="false"
android:ellipsize="end"

Answer 2

Quoting myself from one of my books:

Android's TextView class has the built-in ability to "ellipsize" text, truncating it and adding an ellipsis if the text is longer than the available space. You can use this via the android:ellipsize attribute, for example. This works fairly well, at least for single-line text. The ellipsis that Android uses is not three periods. Rather it uses an actual ellipsis character, where the three dots are contained in a single glyph. Hence, any font that you use that you also use the "ellipsizing" feature will need the ellipsis glyph.

Beyond that, though, Android pads out the string that gets rendered on-screen, such that the length (in characters) is the same before and after "ellipsizing". To make this work, Android replaces one character with the ellipsis, and replaces all other removed characters with the Unicode character 'ZERO WIDTH NO-BREAK SPACE' (U+FEFF). This means the "extra" characters after the ellipsis do not take up any visible space on screen, yet they can be part of the string.

However, this means any custom fonts you use for TextView widgets that you use with android:ellipsize must also support this special Unicode character. Not all fonts do, and you will get artifacts in the on-screen representation of your shortened strings if your font lacks this character (e.g., rogue X's appear at the end of the line).

Answer 3

There was a similar problem which i was facing in my project where in i was using a font type for the text view. few font types have these problem of making the ... appear as [] at the last. The problem would be solved if u try changing the font.

Answer 4

I face the same issue (show boxes([])) for some special symbols when I try to show content which is coming from webservice url even, I don't use android:ellipsize. then I replace code from

textview.settext(content);

to

textview.settext(Html.fromHtml(content));

working fine.

Answer 5

Arslan, your layout is working fine in my case, I have tested the same with:

 <TextView
    android:id="@+id/row_title"
    android:layout_width="fill_parent"
    android:layout_height="wrap_content"
    android:singleLine="true"
    android:textSize="18sp"
    android:ellipsize="end"             
    android:maxLines="1"
    android:text="This is the demo testing demo testing This is the demo testing demo testing"/>

... and getting the exact output as you want "one line ended with ..." and box should be removed. So I think there may be a something wrong with any character or text you are setting.

Answer 6

I have bumped into the same problem when was trying to use custom "MetaPro-Medium.otf" as font for TextView with a android:singleLine="true". The box at the end of the string was really annoying.

I found no way how to solve this problem in Android, but at the same time found following work around.

1. I have installed "FontLab Studio v5.04"
2. Opened my font
3. Selected one of symbols I was not going to use
4. Menu->Glyph->Rename Glyph
5. Changed the name and unicode index from it`s original value to "FEFF" (Thank CommonsWare)
6. Double click on selected symbol and then remove all lines this symbol was created from.
7. Menu->File->Generate Font->save as type otf

As a result I got updated font and problem gone away.