Question

When using Canvas and drawText() method I see a different rendering on Android 4.2.1.

Below 4.2:

For Android 4.2.1 (Nexux 7) I get:

As you can see the text Consumption is very tight. Seems to be a kerning problem introduced in 4.2.1. The Paint used to draw text is nothing special:

titlePaint = new Paint();
titlePaint.setAntiAlias(true);
titlePaint.setColor(0xffffffff);
titlePaint.setTextSize(0.125f);
titlePaint.setTypeface(Typeface.defaultFromStyle(Typeface.BOLD));
titlePaint.setTextAlign(Align.CENTER);
titlePaint.setLinearText(true);

If I don’t use titlePaint.setLinearText(true) I get a strange result on 4.2.1 as you can see there:

Android 4.2 on Nexus 7: canvas.drawText() not working correctly

EDIT:

This strange behaviour has been reported to the Android team: http://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=39755 but it’s still not a “official” issue.

EDIT (2):

Some rumors claim that the problem is a textSize < 1.0f…

Answer 1

Workaround, that I’m currently using:

scalePaint.setTextSize(1.5f);

then, in onDraw method:

canvas.save();
canvas.scale(0.01f, 0.01f);
canvas.drawText(""+i, 0.5f*100, 0.8f*100, scalePaint);                  
canvas.restore();

As you can see, I’m rescaling back the position of the text, so it’s where it’s supposed to be.