Android EditText inputType textShortMessage

Question

What is the purpose of inputType textShortMessage? How will this affect my application? Do certain keyboards, Android versions or applications treat this specially, or differently from just type text?

Answer 1

Not that much difference between text and textShortMessage. While developing the Android Source, google developers felt to create two different class for two different cases. textShortMessage and textLongMessage both inherits the behaviour of text with some different attributes.

There could be so many types of input for a EditText. Android Developer made it easier for us to define the behaviour of a specific EditText.

textShortMessage is for: Variation of TYPE_CLASS_TEXT: entering a short, possibly informal message such as an instant message or a text message.

It means when we use textShortMessage as input type the EditText will open the alphabetic keyboard but the EditText will not be Expanded. If you change it to textLongMessage the EditText will be expanded for multiline text input.

SOURCE: http://developer.android.com/reference/android/text/InputType.html

Answer 2

One difference :

android:inputType="textShortMessage|textMultiLine" 

Will give you the smiley button in preference to the enter key.

android:inputType="textMultiLine" 

Will give you the "enter" key again.