Question

I’m trying to make a control that is a composition of another controls. I’ve tried many ways but none seems to work… You ask why do I need that? Becaused

1. I’ve faced the impossibility of creating a TextView with
   different colors of shadow and gradient foreground

2. I want to make
   a volume text and it’s going to be presented by this custom controls

   public class MainMenuItem extends View {
       private MainMenuItemHelper firstLayerItem;
       private MainMenuItemHelper secondLayerItem;
   
       ...
       @Override
       protected void onDraw(Canvas canvas) {
           super.onDraw(canvas);
           secondLayerItem.draw(canvas);
           firstLayerItem.draw(canvas);
       }
   }
   
   
   public class MainMenuItemHelper extends TextView {
       private List<DrawCommand> commands;
   
       ...
       @Override
       protected void onDraw(Canvas canvas) {
           for (DrawCommand command : commands) {
               command.draw(canvas, getPaint());
               super.onDraw(canvas);
           }
       }
   }
   

Answer 1

a control that is a composition of another controls

You need at least a Layout like RelativeLayout or LinearLayout as a View can’t contain another View. You need a ViewGroup instead.

I don’t know where and how you want to place it but the easiest way is to simply make a xml file containing your controls and style them like you would normally do.

A shadow color can be defined by android:shadowColor to have a shadow for your text.

Making the text itself being a gradient might be very tricky.