Can I add a portrait layout on top of a landscape Camera SurfaceView?

Question

My application should hold a camera preview surface. The camera is fixed to landscape view via AndroidMainfest.xml

<application android:icon="@drawable/icon" 
    android:label="Camera">

    <uses-library android:name="com.google.android.maps" />
    <uses-feature android:name="android.hardware.camera" />
    <uses-feature android:name="android.hardware.camera.autofocus" />

    <activity android:name=".CameraPreview"
            android:label="Camera"
            android:screenOrientation="landscape">
        <intent-filter>
            <action android:name="android.intent.action.MAIN" />
            <category android:name="android.intent.category.LAUNCHER" />
        </intent-filter>
    </activity>

</application>

If there is another way to get the camera preview itself to behave correctly, please let me know.

Now I need to have an overlay that holds a bunch of buttons. Due to usability, the user interface should be set to portrait view (or even better orientation aware).

Is there a way to have a transparent layout (for buttons and other GUI elements) in portrait orientation?

I tried to write a special rotated layout by extending a RelativeLayout, but the onDraw method isn't called at anytime.

public class RotatedOverlay extends RelativeLayout {


private static final String TAG = "RotatedOverlay";


public RotatedOverlay(Context context, AttributeSet attrs ) {
    super(context, attrs);
}

@Override
protected void onDraw(Canvas canvas) {
    canvas.rotate(90);
    super.onDraw(canvas);
}

I am quite new to the Android plattform programming. Of course I dont know much about the programming tricks and workarounds yet. I did a lot of research over the last two weeks (even studied the native Camera implementation), but couldnt find a good solution so far.

Maybe it works with two seperate Activities, but I dont think, that this can the right solution.

Answer 1

Did you succed with this? I have a similar problem.

Answer 2

You need to override onDispatchDraw to rotate the children of a ViewGroup, but then you run into other problems (see my question)