How to make the first character much larger than other in a TextView

Question

I would like to display a paragraph of long text as follow. Here is the snapshot from Flipboard.

Answer 1

By using a single TextView with BufferType.SPANNABLE will solve the problem.

final SpannableString spannableString = new SpannableString(title);
int position = 0;
for (int i = 0, ei = title.length(); i < ei; i++) {
    char c = title.charAt(i);
    if ((c >= 'a' && c <= 'z') || (c >= 'A' && c <= 'Z') || (c >= '0' && c <= '9')) {
        position = i;
        break;
    }
}
spannableString.setSpan(new RelativeSizeSpan(2.0f), position, position + 1, Spanned.SPAN_EXCLUSIVE_EXCLUSIVE);
//titleTextView.setText(spannableString.toString());
titleTextView.setText(spannableString, BufferType.SPANNABLE);

Answer 2

Try this.

Layout XML

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<RelativeLayout xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
   android:layout_width="match_parent"
   android:layout_height="wrap_content"
   android:orientation="horizontal" >

<TextView
    android:id="@+id/bigChar"
    android:layout_width="wrap_content"
    android:layout_height="wrap_content"
    android:layout_marginTop="5dp"
    android:gravity="center_vertical"
    android:text="T"
    android:textSize="40sp" />

<TextView
    android:id="@+id/sideText"
    android:layout_width="wrap_content"
    android:layout_height="wrap_content"
    android:layout_marginTop="10dp"
    android:layout_toRightOf="@id/bigChar"
    android:gravity="center_vertical"
    android:maxLines="2" />


<TextView
    android:id="@+id/spillText"
    android:layout_width="wrap_content"
    android:layout_height="wrap_content"
    android:layout_alignLeft="@id/bigChar"
    android:layout_alignParentLeft="false"
    android:layout_below="@id/bigChar"
    android:layout_marginLeft="5dp"
    android:layout_marginTop="-5dp"
    android:gravity="center_vertical" />
</RelativeLayout>

Activity class

public class MainActivity extends Activity {
private String inputString = "op British supermarket Tesco (LSE: TSCO) (NASDAQOTH: TSCDY.US) is due to announce its half year results on and this is the extra bit of spill text";

@Override
protected void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {
    super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);
    setContentView(R.layout.activity_main);


    TextView bigChar = (TextView) findViewById(R.id.bigChar);
    final TextView sideText = (TextView) findViewById(R.id.sideText);
    final TextView spillText = (TextView) findViewById(R.id.spillText);


    ViewTreeObserver vto = sideText.getViewTreeObserver();
    vto.addOnGlobalLayoutListener(new OnGlobalLayoutListener() {
        @Override
        public void onGlobalLayout() {
           Layout layout = sideText.getLayout();  
           int numOfLines = layout.getLineEnd(2);

           // split the string now
           String spillTextString = inputString.substring(numOfLines, inputString.length());
           spillText.setText(spillTextString);
        }
    });
}
}

Answer 3

For me probably you have use 3 TextViews: 1 - Paragraph Letter 2 - first and second line 3 - rest of the text.