I would like to put a contiguous overline over a s...

# compose

[Rick Regan]

I would like to put a contiguous overline over a series of characters in a Text() composable, like you would notate a repeating decimal. The only options for TextDecoration appear to be LineThrough, Underline, and None. I tried putting "combining overline" unicode characters in the text but it puts an overline over each character, not one contiguous overline across all the characters. Is there a way to do this in Compose?

[jim]

cc @Siyamed

[Rick Regan]

Thinking about this a little more, TextDecoration was probably not the appropriate place to look to solve this because I'd want to be able to overbar a substring of the text. Perhaps then this is not a Compose specific question.

[Siyamed]

I didnt understand why TeztDecoration doesnt work dor this case

[Siyamed]

Are you using AnnotatedString (or factory function of it) to set the TextDecoration on the substring?

[Siyamed]

Currently the factory function is

buildAnnotatedString {
 append(myString)
 setSpanStyle(3,5, SpanStyle(textDecoration = TextDecoration.Underline)
}

I am on mobile so the function signature might not be accurate, but they should be similar

[Rick Regan]

My comment about TextDecoration was imagining a new "overline" option, but that that would not help in the Text() composable because it would overline the whole string. But I have not used AnnotatedString before so I will look into it and let you know.

[Rick Regan]

I found a code example for AnnotatedString which I was able to modify to use TextDecoration.Underline to underline a subset of a string, so that's a good start (thanks!) I also applied the "combining overline" to a substring and that worked, in that it put a bar over each character. To get the "vinculum" for repeating decimals, I would need a contiguous overline. Is that something TextDecoration could support for Compose?

[Siyamed]

Decoration overline is a planned feature, but since it was not natively supported by android we deprioritized it. We want to add it but there would be a considerable time gap.

[Rick Regan]

If there is an open feature request please point me to it so I could star it and comment on it. Thanks.