WordCram Fails in "Android" mode

[jwiese]

When running the Hello World in "java" mode, no problems at all, but the following exception is thrown for "android" mode, probably because java.awt.font.FontRenderContext isn't included in Android.

FATAL EXCEPTION: Animation Thread
java.lang.NoClassDefFoundError: java.awt.font.FontRenderContext
at wordcram.WordShaper.(WordShaper.java:29)
at wordcram.WordCram.getWordCramEngine(WordCram.java:740)
at wordcram.WordCram.drawAll(WordCram.java:781)
at processing.test.helloworld.helloworld.setup(helloworld.java:40)
at processing.core.PApplet.handleDraw(Unknown Source)
at processing.core.PGraphicsAndroid2D.requestDraw(Unknown Source)
at processing.core.PApplet.run(Unknown Source)
at java.lang.Thread.run(Thread.java:856)

Not knowing much about the structure of WordCram, how much of the code would be reusable for a standalone (non-processing-based) Android word cloud library?

[danbernier]

Interesting, I haven't tried running it on Android yet. Time to roll up my sleeves!

It's been a while since I tried to remove Processing from WordCram, but as I remember it, the places I couldn't (easily) remove Processing were pretty essential. Re: Android, I assumed WordCram would run on it, since I'd read all the good news about Processing on Android, but there are some old AWT bits in there.

[jwiese]

Thanks for the quick reply! If I can be helpful in getting this to run on Android, please let me know how I can help.

[danbernier]

I just started looking into this. It might be tougher than I thought.

WordCram turns each word into a java.awt.Shape, so it can create a bounding-box tree for collision detection. (It used to not use java.awt.*, but that was godawful slow - if I rememeber right, it was rendering the font to a bitmap & looking at the pixels.)

To turn a String-and-a-Font into a Shape, it uses the FontRenderContext - look at WordShaper.java for the details. FontRenderContext, and apparently java.awt.* in general, aren't supported on Android. So I'm kind of back to the drawing board for supporting Android. It looks like I'm not the only one: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/11516543/how-to-draw-the-glyph-on-canvas-from-ttf-file

Having no Android expertise myself, if you know how to do this, that'd be a tremendous help! 😄

[jwiese]

Yep, this is part of why I asked about removing processing from wordcram.

In Android, I think the way to do it is using android.graphics.Rect, so the general solution is probably to have a Shape-like class in WordCram source that we can initialize from android.graphics.Rect or awt.Shape depending on the platform.

Another issue is the font options in Android. From http://wiki.processing.org/w/Android :

Using createFont() (instead of loadFont()) can help improve text quality, particularly with 2D rendering. Use PFont.list() to get a list of available fonts on the system, and select one of those, or include a .ttf or .otf file in the data directory of your sketch.

method for retrieving the bounding box: http://developer.android.com/reference/android/graphics/Paint.html#getTextBounds(java.lang.String, int, int, android.graphics.Rect).

Paint p = new Paint();
p.setTypeface(Typeface.DEFAULT); //not fully reliable what fonts are installed on a phone, but can include .ttf/.otf files
p.setSize(fontSize);
Rect r = new Rect();
p.getTextBounds(word, 0,0, r);
return new WCShape(r); //WCShape represents the WordCram Shape object that I mentioned above

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