When designing a layout in XML, Android supports a number of different metrics. From your Java code though, methods like setPadding or setTextSize only take absolute pixel values. It took me a while to find a solution, but apparently the (slightly too cumbersome, I feel) way to to this is through defining a Dimension Resource.

For example, create a resource file in ./res/values/dimens.xml and add this item:

<dimen name=table_padding>10dp</dimen>

Then, from within your activity you would do:

int tablePadding = getResources().getDimensionPixelSize(R.dimen.table_padding);

I wonder whether the conversion code used by getDimension/getDimensionPixelSize is exposed somewhere.

Edit April 2010: There’s actually a snippet in this document about screen sizes, which is essentially this function:

private int dipToPixels(float dipValue) {
     return (int) (dipValue * getResources().getDisplayMetrics().density + 0.5f);
}

As far as I can tell, the +0.5 part is intended to ensure that the result is at least 1 pixel always.