Valid values for android:fontFamily and what they map to?

Question

In the answer to this question the user lists values for android:fontFamily and 12 variants (see below). Where do these values come from? The documentation for android:fontFamily does not list this information in any place (I checked here, and here). The strings are listed in the Android styles.xml file in various places, but how do these map back to the Roboto font?

From android 4.1 / 4.2, the following Roboto font families are available:

android:fontFamily="sans-serif"           // roboto regular  
android:fontFamily="sans-serif-light"     // roboto light  
android:fontFamily="sans-serif-condensed" // roboto condensed  
android:fontFamily="sans-serif-thin"      // roboto thin (android 4.2)  
android:fontFamily="sans-serif-medium"    // roboto medium (android 5.0)

in combination with this

android:textStyle="normal|bold|italic" 

12 variants are possible:

• Regular
• Italic
• Bold
• Bold-italic
• Light
• Light-italic
• Thin
• Thin-italic
• Condensed regular
• Condensed italic
• Condensed bold
• Condensed bold-italic

In the styles.xml file in the application I'm working on somebody listed this as the font family, and I'm pretty sure it's wrong:

<item name="android:fontFamily">Roboto-Regular.ttf</item>

I'd like to get the theme for our app set up correctly (which includes using fontFamily correctly) and remove all the redundancy that is in some of the styles that were created before I had a look at the file.

Answer 1

Where do these values come from? The documentation for android:fontFamily does not list this information in any place

These are indeed not listed in the documentation. But they are mentioned here under the section 'Font families'. The document lists every new public API for Android Jelly Bean 4.1.

In the styles.xml file in the application I'm working on somebody listed this as the font family, and I'm pretty sure it's wrong:

Yes, that's wrong. You don't reference the font file, you have to use the font name mentioned in the linked document above. In this case it should have been this:

<item name="android:fontFamily">sans-serif</item>

Like the linked answer already stated, 12 variants are possible:

Added in Android Jelly Bean (4.1) - API 16 :

Regular (default):

<item name="android:fontFamily">sans-serif</item>
<item name="android:textStyle">normal</item> 

Italic:

<item name="android:fontFamily">sans-serif</item>
<item name="android:textStyle">italic</item>

Bold:

<item name="android:fontFamily">sans-serif</item>
<item name="android:textStyle">bold</item>

Bold-italic:

<item name="android:fontFamily">sans-serif</item>
<item name="android:textStyle">bold|italic</item>

Light:

<item name="android:fontFamily">sans-serif-light</item>
<item name="android:textStyle">normal</item>

Light-italic:

<item name="android:fontFamily">sans-serif-light</item>
<item name="android:textStyle">italic</item>

Thin :

<item name="android:fontFamily">sans-serif-thin</item>
<item name="android:textStyle">normal</item>

Thin-italic :

<item name="android:fontFamily">sans-serif-thin</item>
<item name="android:textStyle">italic</item>

Condensed regular:

<item name="android:fontFamily">sans-serif-condensed</item>
<item name="android:textStyle">normal</item>

Condensed italic:

<item name="android:fontFamily">sans-serif-condensed</item>
<item name="android:textStyle">italic</item>

Condensed bold:

<item name="android:fontFamily">sans-serif-condensed</item>
<item name="android:textStyle">bold</item>

Condensed bold-italic:

<item name="android:fontFamily">sans-serif-condensed</item>
<item name="android:textStyle">bold|italic</item>

Added in Android Lollipop (v5.0) - API 21 :

Medium:

<item name="android:fontFamily">sans-serif-medium</item>
<item name="android:textStyle">normal</item>

Medium-italic:

<item name="android:fontFamily">sans-serif-medium</item>
<item name="android:textStyle">italic</item>

Black:

<item name="android:fontFamily">sans-serif-black</item>
<item name="android:textStyle">italic</item>

For quick reference, this is how they all look like: