Beginning Android

TextView showing the selected entry:

<?xml version='1.0' encoding='utf-8'?>
<LinearLayout xmlns:android='http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android'
 android:orientation='vertical'
 android:layout_width='fill_parent'
 android:layout_height='fill_parent' >
 <TextView
  android:id='@+id/selection'
  android:layout_width='fill_parent'
  android:layout_height='wrap_content'
 />
 <ListView
  android:id='@android:id/list'
  android:layout_width='fill_parent'
  android:layout_height='fill_parent'
  android:drawSelectorOnTop='false'
 />
</LinearLayout>

In terms of Java code, most of the guts of the activities are poured into an abstract LoremBase class:

abstract public class LoremBase extends ListActivity {
 abstract ListAdapter makeMeAnAdapter(Intent intent);
 private static final int LOCAL_SEARCH_ID = Menu.FIRST+1;
 private static final int GLOBAL_SEARCH_ID = Menu.FIRST+2;
 private static final int CLOSE_ID = Menu.FIRST+3;
 TextView selection;
 ArrayList<String> items = new ArrayList<String>();
 @Override
 public void onCreate(Bundle icicle) {
  super.onCreate(icicle);
  setContentView(R.layout.main);
  selection = (TextView)findViewById(R.id.selection);
  try {
   XmlPullParser xpp = getResources().getXml (R.xml.words);
   while (xpp.getEventType()! =XmlPullParser.END_DOCUMENT) {
    if (xpp.getEventType()==XmlPullParser.START_TAG) {
     if (xpp.getName().equals('word')) {
      items.add(xpp.getAttributeValue(0));
     }
    }
    xpp.next();
   }
  } catch (Throwable t) {
   Toast
   .makeText(this, 'Request failed: ' + t.toString(), 4000).show();
  }
  setDefaultKeyMode(DEFAULT_KEYS_SEARCH_LOCAL);
  onNewIntent(getIntent());
 }
 @Override
 public void onNewIntent(Intent intent) {
  ListAdapter adapter = makeMeAnAdapter(intent);
  if (adapter==null) {
   finish();
  } else {
   setListAdapter(adapter);
  }
 }
 public void onListItemClick(ListView parent, View v, int position,
  long id) {
  selection.setText(items.get (position).toString());
 }
 @Override
 public boolean onCreateOptionsMenu(Menu menu) {
  menu.add(Menu.NONE, LOCAL_SEARCH_ID, Menu.NONE, 'Local Search')
   .setIcon(android.R.drawable.ic_search_category_default);
  menu.add(Menu.NONE, GLOBAL_SEARCH_ID, Menu.NONE, 'Global Search')
   .setIcon(R.drawable.search).setAlphabeticShortcut (SearchManager.MENU_KEY);
  menu.add(Menu.NONE, CLOSE_ID, Menu.NONE, 'Close')
   .setIcon(R.drawable.eject).setAlphabeticShortcut ('c');
  return(super.onCreateOptionsMenu (menu));
 }
 @Override