title: What is the use of the res/values/public.xml file on Android?
body: <p>I've searched on Google, but couldn't find any relevant results.</p>
  
  <p>I also checked <strong>the official Android docs</strong> and <a href="http://developer.android.com/guide/topics/resources/available-resources.html" rel="noreferrer"><strong>this page</strong></a> (for all the available resources) was all I could find. The <strong>relevant links</strong> (to the <strong><code>res/values/</code></strong> directory) I found on this page were:</p>
  
  <ul>
  <li><a href="http://developer.android.com/guide/topics/resources/string-resource.html" rel="noreferrer">string resources</a></li>
  <li><a href="http://developer.android.com/guide/topics/resources/style-resource.html" rel="noreferrer">style resources</a></li>
  <li><a href="http://developer.android.com/guide/topics/resources/more-resources.html" rel="noreferrer">more resources</a></li>
  </ul>
  
  <p>These pages don't tell anything about the <strong><code>res/values/public.xml</code></strong> file.<br>
  Here is an <strong>example</strong> I found for <a href="http://pastebin.com/LM2xkRGp" rel="noreferrer"><strong>this  type of file</strong></a>.</p>
  
  <h2>Small snippet</h2>
  
  <pre><code>&lt;?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?&gt;
  &lt;resources&gt;
      &lt;public type="attr" name="commentTextColor" id="0xAA010007" /&gt;
      &lt;public type="drawable" name="add_icon_bl" id="0xAA020000" /&gt;
      &lt;public type="layout" name="act_date_picker" id="0xAA030001" /&gt;
      &lt;public type="anim" name="activity_slide_from_bottom" id="0xAA040000" /&gt;
      &lt;public type="xml" name="pref_menu" id="0xAA050000" /&gt;
      &lt;public type="raw" name="alert_bell_animation_bl" id="0xAA060000" /&gt;
      &lt;public type="array" name="taskRepeat" id="0xAA070000" /&gt;
      &lt;public type="color" name="theme_main_color_bl" id="0xAA080000" /&gt;
      &lt;public type="string" name="no_internet" id="0xAA0a0001" /&gt;
      &lt;public type="id" name="page1" id="0xAA0d0015" /&gt;
  &lt;/resources&gt;
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>As you can see from the <strong><code>type</code></strong> attribute, it contains pretty much <strong>all the standard resource types</strong> that you normally put in <strong>separate directories</strong> under the <strong><code>res</code></strong> directory...</p>
  
  <hr>
  
  <p><strong>Why would one want to misuse the directories that Android provides and use a single file to store all the values in? Can someone give more information about this?</strong></p>