Question

Is there a way to make all lines in a multi-line edittext underlined?
I want all lines to show the line, even if there’s no text on it.

Answer 1

This sort of thing is done in the Notepad sample demo. If we look at the editor source, we can see they use a custom text editor, like this :

/**
 * A custom EditText that draws lines between each line of text that is displayed.
 */
public static class LinedEditText extends EditText {
    private Rect mRect;
    private Paint mPaint;

    // we need this constructor for LayoutInflater
    public LinedEditText(Context context, AttributeSet attrs) {
        super(context, attrs);

        mRect = new Rect();
        mPaint = new Paint();
        mPaint.setStyle(Paint.Style.STROKE);
        mPaint.setColor(0x800000FF);
    }

    @Override
    protected void onDraw(Canvas canvas) {
        int count = getLineCount();
        Rect r = mRect;
        Paint paint = mPaint;

        for (int i = 0; i < count; i++) {
            int baseline = getLineBounds(i, r);

            canvas.drawLine(r.left, baseline + 1, r.right, baseline + 1, paint);
        }

        super.onDraw(canvas);
    }
}

that they then declare this way in the layout :

<view xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
    class="com.example.android.notepad.NoteEditor$LinedEditText"
    android:id="@+id/note"
    android:layout_width="fill_parent"
    android:layout_height="fill_parent"
    android:background="@android:color/transparent"
    android:padding="5dp"
    android:scrollbars="vertical"
    android:fadingEdge="vertical"
    android:gravity="top"
    android:textSize="22sp"
    android:capitalize="sentences" />