Question

I have a fairly simple layout with an image, and some textviews wrapped in a vertical LinearLayout. Whenever I set the background of this layout to be a 9patch, the height of the layout seemingly gets set to the height of the 9patch (even though the 9patch seems to successfully stretch to be the height of the layout.)

If I use a solid background color, the height of the layout works as intended.

Here’s a screenshot with the 9patch in place:

Here’s a screenshot with a solid background instead of the 9patch (notice how the text is centered in the layout now):

And finally, here’s the XML:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<LinearLayout xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
    android:layout_width="fill_parent"
    android:layout_height="fill_parent"
    android:background="@color/show_gray"
    android:gravity="center_vertical"
    android:orientation="horizontal" android:weightSum="5">

    <ImageView
        android:id="@+id/imageView1"
        android:layout_width="0dp"
        android:layout_height="match_parent"
        android:layout_weight="4"
        android:scaleType="centerCrop"
        android:src="@drawable/temp_featured_banner" />

    <LinearLayout
        android:layout_width="wrap_content"
        android:layout_height="match_parent"
        android:layout_weight="1"
        android:background="#FF0000"
        android:gravity="center"
        android:orientation="vertical"
        android:paddingLeft="30dp" >

        <TextView
            android:id="@+id/textView1"
            android:layout_width="wrap_content"
            android:layout_height="wrap_content"
            android:text="Large Text"
            android:textColor="@color/white" />

        <TextView
            android:id="@+id/textView2"
            android:layout_width="wrap_content"
            android:layout_height="wrap_content"
            android:text="Small Text"
            android:textColor="@color/white" />
    </LinearLayout>

</LinearLayout>

… and just in case, here’s a screenshot of draw9patch showing my 9patch drawable:

I suspected that the LinearLayout wasn’t taller than the natural size of the 9patch (so there was nothing to stretch..), so I reduced the 9patch in height by 50%. The problem still existed.

Any ideas?

Answer 1

The top and left of the nine patch refer to the ‘stretchable’ area of the image. The right and bottom of the nine-patch define where the content should go – currently, you’re just telling it to guess (and it guesses by putting all of the content in the line designated by the top left dot). from what I can tell from your image, you probably want a solid black line top to bottom (leaving out the corners, of course) on the right of the nine-patch, and a matching dot to your top-right black dot on the bottom. This tells the OS where to put the content in relation to the image so that it better knows how to stretch the image.