TextView - setting the text size programmatically doesn't seem to work

I am using Eclipse Indigo, testing on 2 emulators(2.2 and 3.0).

the code below shows what I am testing now, however setting the text size reveals nothing on the screen when trying to run the emulator.(if i comment out the text size the text shows up with a red color). I thought that somehow eclipse wasn't rebuilding the code but i added the line of code to add the blue background and that worked. I have tried setting the text size after setting the text with still no success. the code is below. thanks for your help! (disclaimer) - i am trying to stay away from xml. Being that i already know java i don't want to depend on that.

import android.app.Activity;
import android.graphics.Color;
import android.os.Bundle;
import android.widget.TextView;

public class TestAndroidvs2Activity extends Activity {
/** Called when the activity is first created. */
@Override
public void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {
    super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);
    TextView text = new TextView(this);
    text.setTextColor(Color.RED);
    text.setTextSize(2);    
    text.setBackgroundColor(Color.BLUE);
    text.setText("Hello Android");


    setContentView(text);
  }
}

the method TextView.setTextSize(int unit , float size); takes two parameters .

Try this :

text.setTextSize(TypedValue.COMPLEX_UNIT_SP,14);

refer this and this.

UPDATE: Now the setTextSize(float size) will set the text size automatically in "scaled pixel" units. no need to mention the COMPLEX_UNIT_SP manually. Refer to the documentation.


This fixed the issue for me. I got uniform font size across all devices.

 textView.setTextSize(TypedValue.COMPLEX_UNIT_PX,getResources().getDimension(R.dimen.font));

Currently, setTextSize(float size) method will work well so we don't need to use another method for change text size

android.widget.TextView.java source code

/**
 * Set the default text size to the given value, interpreted as "scaled
 * pixel" units.  This size is adjusted based on the current density and
 * user font size preference.
 *
 * <p>Note: if this TextView has the auto-size feature enabled than this function is no-op.
 *
 * @param size The scaled pixel size.
 *
 * @attr ref android.R.styleable#TextView_textSize
 */
@android.view.RemotableViewMethod
public void setTextSize(float size) {
    setTextSize(TypedValue.COMPLEX_UNIT_SP, size);
}

Example using

textView.setTextSize(20); // set your text size = 20sp