Question

Is there a way to place widgets / views on the screen at any specific position required?

Something like a calendar with daily events that could overlap.
e.g. if every hour in a day is represented by 1 hour and there are 2 appointments that overlap partially (say 12:00 – 12:30 and 12:20 – 01:00) this would be drawn in the same row but the 12:20 one positioned slightly below the first.

Also there may be views (Image/TextView) that need to span 2 rows (i.e. 12:30 – 1:30).

I think a SurfaceView is one option (is this efficient?) but am not sure if there is some better layout that could be used.

We could use a TableLayout for the hour rows but not sure if there is a way to place overlapping widgets on this?

TIA

Answer 1

Official answer: create your own layout manager class that implements the rules you want.

Easier but slightly messy answer: use a RelativeLayout and margins to position your widgets. To have widgets overlap, have the one that should be on top be a later child in the layout (e.g., farther down the list of child XML elements in a layout file).

What you don’t want: AbsoluteLayout. This is deprecated.