I've tried the following code but the drop shadow will not show up, it just appears as regular white text.
TextView newsTitle = new TextView(mCtx);
newsTitle.setText(newsitems[position].getTitle());
newsTitle.setTextAppearance(mCtx, R.style.TextWithDropShadow);
RelativeLayout.LayoutParams newsTitleParams =
new RelativeLayout.LayoutParams(LayoutParams.WRAP_CONTENT, LayoutParams.WRAP_CONTENT);
newsTitleParams.addRule(RelativeLayout.ABOVE, linLayout.getId());
newsTitleParams.addRule(RelativeLayout.CENTER_HORIZONTAL);
newsTitle.setLayoutParams(newsTitleParams);
relLayout.addView(newsTitle);
And the style file is
<style name="TextWithDropShadow">
<item name="android:textColor">#ffffff</item>
<item name="android:textStyle">bold</item>
<item name="android:shadowColor">#000000</item>
<item name="android:shadowDx">2</item>
<item name="android:shadowDy">2</item>
<item name="android:shadowRadius">2</item>
Is there an issue with relative layouts and drop shadows perhaps?
Although this doesn't answer the problem at hand, a different approach works.
Adding this line
newsTitle.setShadowLayer(15, 0, 0, Color.BLACK);
Would still be interesting to know what I was doing wrong using the styles.