Question

I need to create an Android horizontal layout design with a vertical LinearLayout on the left and a TextView on the right, as shown below:

¦==========================¦
¦      A1     ¦            ¦
¦             ¦     BB     ¦
¦      A2     ¦            ¦
¦==========================¦

The vertical LinearLayout on the left contains two TextView elements and sections A and B take the entire screen width. All TextView elements contain dynamically assigned text content.

I want the width of the TextView B to be determined by its content so that it expands or shrinks to show its entire content (which can’t wrap and must be shown in a single line), while the width of the LinearLayout A on the left is to be determined by the width of TextView B, as shown below:

TextView B expands:

¦==========================¦
¦     A1    ¦              ¦
¦           ¦     BBB      ¦
¦     A2    ¦              ¦
¦==========================¦

TextView B shrinks:

¦==========================¦
¦      A1       ¦          ¦
¦               ¦    B     ¦
¦      A2       ¦          ¦
¦==========================¦

My idea was to use a LinearLayout like this:

<LinearLayout
    android:layout_width="fill_parent"
    android:layout_height="wrap_content" 
    android:orientation="horizontal" >

    <LinearLayout
        android:orientation="vertical"
        android:layout_width="wrap_content"
        android:layout_height="wrap_content" >

        <TextView
            android:id="@+id/A1"
            android:layout_width="wrap_content"
            android:layout_height="wrap_content" />

        <TextView
            android:id="@+id/A2"
            android:layout_width="wrap_content"
            android:layout_height="wrap_content" />

    </LinearLayout>

    <TextView
        android:id="@+id/B"
        android:layout_width="wrap_content" 
        android:layout_height="wrap_content"
        android:singleLine="true" />

</LinearLayout>

but with the above layout, if the content of TextView A1 is long enough, it takes the whole screen width and TextView B disappears.

Any ideas?

Answer 1

You should make the right textview to wrap content and make the left linearlayout use the weight attribute as

android:layout_weight="1.0"

This will tell the linearlayout to take the remaining space. But if the text is too long, either reduce the size of the text or elipsize.