How to adjust text kerning in Android TextView?

Question

Is there a way to adjust the spacing between characters in an Android TextView? I believe this is typically called "kerning".

I'm aware of the android:textScaleX attribute, but that compresses the characters along with the spacing.

Answer 1

I built a custom class that extends TextView and adds a method "setSpacing". The workaround is similar to what @Noah said. The method adds a space between each letter of the String and with SpannedString changes the TextScaleX of the spaces, allowing positive and negative spacing.

Hope that helps someone ^^

/**
 * Text view that allows changing the letter spacing of the text.
 * 
 * @author Pedro Barros (pedrobarros.dev at gmail.com)
 * @since May 7, 2013
 */

import android.content.Context;
import android.text.Spannable;
import android.text.SpannableString;
import android.text.style.ScaleXSpan;
import android.util.AttributeSet;
import android.widget.TextView;

public class LetterSpacingTextView extends TextView {

    private float spacing = Spacing.NORMAL;
    private CharSequence originalText = "";


    public LetterSpacingTextView(Context context) {
        super(context);
    }

    public LetterSpacingTextView(Context context, AttributeSet attrs){
        super(context, attrs);
    }

    public LetterSpacingTextView(Context context, AttributeSet attrs, int defStyle){
        super(context, attrs, defStyle);
    }

    public float getSpacing() {
        return this.spacing;
    }

    public void setSpacing(float spacing) {
        this.spacing = spacing;
        applySpacing();
    }

    @Override
    public void setText(CharSequence text, BufferType type) {
        originalText = text;
        applySpacing();
    }

    @Override
    public CharSequence getText() {
        return originalText;
    }

    private void applySpacing() {
        if (this == null || this.originalText == null) return;
        StringBuilder builder = new StringBuilder();
        for(int i = 0; i < originalText.length(); i++) {
            builder.append(originalText.charAt(i));
            if(i+1 < originalText.length()) {
                builder.append("u00A0");
            }
        }
        SpannableString finalText = new SpannableString(builder.toString());
        if(builder.toString().length() > 1) {
            for(int i = 1; i < builder.toString().length(); i+=2) {
                finalText.setSpan(new ScaleXSpan((spacing+1)/10), i, i+1, Spannable.SPAN_EXCLUSIVE_EXCLUSIVE);
            }
        }
        super.setText(finalText, BufferType.SPANNABLE);
    }

    public class Spacing {
        public final static float NORMAL = 0;
    }
}

Using it:

LetterSpacingTextView textView = new LetterSpacingTextView(context);
textView.setSpacing(10); //Or any float. To reset to normal, use 0 or LetterSpacingTextView.Spacing.NORMAL
textView.setText("My text");
//Add the textView in a layout, for instance:
((LinearLayout) findViewById(R.id.myLinearLayout)).addView(textView);