Question

I have an activity with two Buttons and a TextView in a LinearLayout. My TextView is offset downwards and the text doesn’t fit inside the box. Can you explain what is happening? I think it is related to padding, and I’ve read several discussions about the perils of TextView padding, but that doesn’t explain why the text is cut off at the bottom.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<LinearLayout xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
    android:layout_width="wrap_content" 
    android:layout_height="wrap_content"
    android:orientation="horizontal"
    android:background="#800080">

    <Button
        android:text="This"
        android:background="@drawable/button_red" 
        android:layout_width="wrap_content"
        android:layout_height="wrap_content"
    />
    <Button
        android:text="That"
        android:background="@drawable/button_green" 
        android:layout_width="wrap_content"
        android:layout_height="wrap_content"
    />
    <TextView 
        android:text="Copious amounts of text that overflows onto several lines on a small screen, causing the TextView to dangle below the buttons.  Why it does this I can't imagine.  I only hope someone can help me with this." 
        android:layout_width="wrap_content"
        android:layout_height="wrap_content"
        android:background="#533f93"
    />
</LinearLayout>

This code produces this display:

The purple is the LinearLayout, the blue is the TextView. As you can see, the TextView’s top is below those of the buttons and its bottom is below the bottom of the LinearLayout. As I add text to the TextView, the LinearLayout increases its height appropriately, but because the TextView is offset, I always lose the bottom of the last line.

I ran Hierarchy Viewer and it gave me this wireframe:

Which shows the vertical offset at the top, but misses the bottom of the TextView. The same wireframe with the LinearLayout selected looks like this:

According to Hierarchy Viewer, the top of the buttons is at 0, but the top of the TextView is at 7. I’ve tried various fixes, mostly culled from this site:

    android:paddingTop="0dp"
    android:background="@null"
    android:includeFontPadding="false"

None of these fixed my issue.

Answer 1

Set android:baselineAligned property of your LinearLayout to false.

From documentation:

When set to false, prevents the layout from aligning its children’s
baselines. This attribute is particularly useful when the children use
different values for gravity. The default value is true.