android: how to persistently store a Spanned?
android, parcelable, serialization, spanned
Solution
Right now, `Html.toHtml()` is your only built-in option. `Parcelable` is used for inter-process communication and is not designed to be durable. If `toHtml()` does not cover all the particular types of spans that you are using, you will have to cook up your own serialization mechanism.
Since saving the object involves disk I/O, you should be doing that in a background thread anyway, regardless of the speed of `toHtml()`.
Problem
I want to save a Spanned object persistently. (I'm saving the String it's based on persistently now, but it takes over 1 second to run Html.fromHtml() on it, noticeably slowing the UI.) I see things like ParcelableSpan and SpannedString and SpannableString but I'm not sure which to use.