Question: I have two linear layouts inside a parent linear layout. all horizontal. I want all of `l_child` to show and part of `r_child` to show; while the rest of `r_child` will be off-screen to the right. How do I accomplish that? 

```
<LinearLayout

    android:orientation="horizontal" >

    <LinearLayout
        android:id="@+id/l_child"
        android:orientation="horizontal" >
    </LinearLayout>

    <LinearLayout
        android:id="@+id/r_child"
        android:orientation="horizontal" >
    </LinearLayout>

</LinearLayout>

```

Answer: 
Try giving the parent `LinearLayout` a negative right margin. 

```
android:layout_marginRight="-50dp" 

```

Other solution might be to put the parent `LinearLayout` inside a `ScrollView`, and set the widths of children layouts to the desired width. In this case, you'll be able to scroll the right layout back to the screen.
Layout weights are only for distributing layouts to fill a view, so no overflowing can be done this way.

Assigning layout\_width with density independent pixels will result in varied success for different size devices.

So I believe you would have more success adding your layouts programmatically based on the screen size.

See this post for getting the screen width:
[Get screen dimensions in pixels](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/1016896/how-to-get-screen-dimensions)

Once you have the screen width, you can assign the inner-layout dimensions by pixels (with LinearLayout.LayoutParams), calculated as percentages of the screen width. 

If you want the left layout to take up 80% of the screen, use .8\*screen\_width for the size, and if you want the right layout to then overflow by 20% of the screen, use .4\*screen\_width for that size.