Displaying Text to Users with TextView

One of the most basic user interface elements, or controls, in the Android SDK is the TextView control. You use it, quite simply, to draw text on the screen. You primarily use it to display fixed text strings or labels.

Frequently, the TextView control is a child control within other screen elements and controls. As with most of the user interface elements, it is derived from View and is within the android.widget package. Because it is a View, all the standard attributes such as width, height, padding, and visibility can be applied to the object. However, because this is a text-displaying control, you can apply many other TextView attributes to control behavior and how the text is viewed in a variety of situations.