IssueTracker

At present it is not possible to specify a typeface (other than by styling
the default typeface) via XML. This is problematic for user interfaces that
require a consistent non-standard typeface across many activities. Possible
solutions include:

1) Creating an extension of TextView that sets the typeface, and
referencing that in the API (this needs to be done for extensions of
TextView too such as Button).

2) Assigning every TextView an id, and then in onCreate finding each View explicitly and setting the typeface (a time consuming and error prone
approach for large applications).

3) Walking the View hierarchy and setting the typeface on every TextView
(extremely inefficient).

Note that all three approaches have the added complication that the
application developer needs to address the styling of typeface too.

In my opinion, none of these solutions really address the problem
adequately.

I haven't taken the time to produce a full proposal on how I would like to
see this addressed, but my inclination is to treat typefaces as resources:
TTF files could be placed in a "typeface" resource directory and subjected
to the usual configuration selection process. This could be useful if the
developer needed to fallback to a default typeface for a locale that was
unsupported by a particular typeface, or say if a different typeface
provided better clarity for smaller screens.

The typeface could be specified using an XML attribute, a typeface in the
file res/typeface/myfont.ttf would be assigned using:

<TextView
  ...
  android:textTypeface="@typeface/myfont"
  />

Furthermore, since bold, regular and italic typefaces are packaged as
separate TTF files, it would be necessary to have a "typeface selector"
resource type that could choose a typeface based on the style. Informally,
something like:

<selector>
  <item android:bold="true" android:typeface="@typeface/myfontb"/>
  <item android:italic="true" android:typeface="@typeface/myfonti"/>
  <item android:bold="true" android:italic="true"
android:typeface="@typeface/myfontbi"/>
  <item android:typeface="@typeface/myfont"/>
</selector>

The capability to specify algorithmically generated italics and bold might
also be useful (say via new boolean attributes on typeface items called
android:embolden and android:italicize).