Spelling suggestions give redundant values with android.text.TextWatcher

Question

I'm using the android.text.TextWatcher interface to listen to changes on an EditText in one of my apps. I monitor the changes to allow Undo options, using the beforeTextChanged() and onTextChanged().

Usually, changes happens one character at a time, for instance if the user types "hello", i'll get the following values for the start, after and count values of the beforeTextChanged() method :

start = 0; count = 0; after = 1;      // typed 'h'
start = 1; count = 0; after = 1;      // typed 'e' 
start = 2; count = 0; after = 1;      // typed 'l'
start = 3; count = 0; after = 1;      // typed 'l'
start = 4; count = 0; after = 1;      // typed 'o'

Now, on ICS / Samsung Galaxy Nexus, with the spelling suggestions active, when I type the same text, the word is underlined in the EditText until I insert a space and I get the following results :

start = 0; count = 0; after = 1;      // typed 'h'
start = 0; count = 1; after = 2;      // typed 'e'
start = 0; count = 2; after = 3;      // typed 'l'
start = 0; count = 3; after = 4;      // typed 'l'
start = 0; count = 4; after = 5;      // typed 'o'

According to the documentation, the latter behavior is seen as "the user typed a 1 letter word, then erased it and typed a 2 letter words, then erased it and typed a 3 letter word, and so on...". And when I perform undos on the EditText, i get "hello", "", "hell", "", "hel", "", "he", "", "h", where I only want to have "hello", "".

Is there a way to prevent the spelling suggestions to give these values. IMHO, this break the contract given in the method documentation.

If not, is there a way to prevent the suggestion on my edit text ?

Answer 1

You can prevent suggestions easily enough:

<EditText
    ...
    android:inputType="textNoSuggestions" />

I'm sure this would work well with all ICS devices. I believe that field is not available on older devices but under the circumstances that shouldn't be a problem.