Android and   in TextView

Question

TextView respects the Unicode no-break space character (\u00A0), which would be a simpler/lighter solution than HTML.

It is possible to use   to have a readable solution. Including \u00A0 or   or  /  in the text doesn't really convey much information to the reader of the source code (or translator for that matter), unless you remember the hex codes. Here's a way to use the named entity in strings.xml:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE resources [
    <!ENTITY nbsp "&#160;"><!-- non-breaking space, U+00A0 -->
]>
<resources>
    ...
</resources>

This will create the missing declaration. The original HTML declaration can be found in https://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml-lat1.ent referenced from the usual XHTML DTDs. All this works, because the XML parser reads these and substitutes while loading the file, so the entity won't be present in the resulting compiled resources.

  in Android Text (CharSequence) Resources

<!-- Defined in <resources> -->
<string name="html_text">Don\'t break <b>this&nbsp;name</b></string>

<!-- Used in a layout -->
<TextView
    android:layout_width="130dp"
    android:layout_height="wrap_content"
    android:background="#10000000"
    android:text="@string/html_text"
    />

Device and preview (preview doesn't recognize HTML)

  in Android String (formatted) Resources

<!-- Defined in <resources> -->
<string name="formatted_text">%1$s is&nbsp;nice</string>

<!-- Used in a layout -->
<TextView
    android:layout_width="130dp"
    android:layout_height="wrap_content"
    android:background="#10000000"
    tools:text="@string/formatted_text"
    />

Then in code:

String contents = getString(R.string.formatted_text, "Using an  ");
((TextView)view.findViewById(android.R.id.text1)).setText(contents);

Device and preview (preview doesn't recognize entities and Java strings are literal text!)

Further tricks

These are just example uses of DTD entities, use it base on your own preference.

<!ENTITY con "\&apos;"><!-- contraction, otherwise error: "Apostrophe not preceded by \"
                            Sadly &apos; cannot be overridden due to XML spec:
                            https://www.w3.org/TR/xml/#sec-predefined-ent -->
<!ENTITY param1 "&#37;1$s"><!-- format string argument #1 -->

<string name="original">Don\'t wrap %1$s</string>
<string name="with_entities">Don&con;t wrap &param1;</string>

Both of them help highlighting:

\u00A0 is a non-breaking space, \u0020 is not a non-breaking space

The TextView should respect the non breaking space

<string name="test">Hello&#160;world</string>

or

new TextView("Hello\u00A0world");

One unique situation I ran into was adding a non-breaking space to a string resource that took String.format parameters.

<resources>
    <string name="answer_progress" formatted="false">Answered %d of %d</string>
</resources>

I tried to simply copy and past the non-breaking space character into the string and it was replaced with a regular old space after compiling.

Removing the formatted="false", numbering the format args and using the backslash notation worked for me:

<resources>
    <string name="answer_progress">Answered %1$d\u00A0of\u00A0%2$d</string>
</resources>

This worked for me:

if (android.os.Build.VERSION.SDK_INT >= android.os.Build.VERSION_CODES.N) {
    textview.setText(Html.fromHtml(your string, Html.FROM_HTML_MODE_LEGACY));
} else {
    textview.setText(Html.fromHtml(your string);
}

This is an example that using nbsp in a TextView

<string name="text">Example:\u00A0</string>