Invisible unicode character (0x200E) is showing a marker in Android TextView (Gingerbread and below)
<p>I am inserting <a href="http://www.fileformat.info/info/unicode/char/200e/index.htm" rel="nofollow">\u200E</a> marks in English strings to force left to right. This invisible unicode character (BiDi mark) works fine on ICS and Jelly Bean, but I am noticing a weird marker when running the code on Gingerbread as shown in this screenshot:</p>

<p><img src="http://i.stack.imgur.com/4vkYU.png" alt="enter image description here"></p>

<p>Here is the code I used to reproduce this issue:</p>

<pre><code>public class MyActivity extends Activity {
    @Override
    public void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {
        super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);
        final TextView view = new TextView(this);
        view.setText("text \u200E\u200E\u200E text");
        setContentView(view);
    }
}
</code></pre>

<p>Any ideas on why this invisible character is shown and how to hide it?</p>
