android: LayoutParams for TextView makes the view disappear, programmatically

Question

I\'ve hit this from various different angles. Basically the gist is this:

I\'ve layed out a template in XML for an interface which NEEDS to be run programmatically,

Answer 1

what is the 3rd variable in layoutparams supposed to do, is that alpha? what happens if you comment out paramsExample.setMargins

finally what happens if you to txtviewExample.setVisible(View.Visible) after you setLayoutParams?

those would be the things I would try if you haven't