Painting

Some objects have default appearance. When they are created, OS decorates with a pre-defined appearance.

Some components don't have any intrinsic appearance. These are Applet, Panel, Frame and 454d31e Canvas. For these objects paint() method is used to render them.

public void paint(Graphics g)

The paint() method provides a graphics context (an instance of Graphics class) for drawing. This is passed as a method argument.

A Graphics object encapsulates state information needed for the basic rendering operations that Java supports. This state information includes the following properties:

The Component object on which to draw.

A translation origin for rendering and clipping coordinates.

The current clip.

The current color.

The current font.

The current logical pixel operation function (XOR or Paint).

The current XOR alternation color.

We can use this Graphics object to achieve the following functionality:

Selecting a color - g.setColor(Color)

There are 13 predefined colors in Color class. Or create a new color using Color(R,G,B)

Selecting a Font - g.setFont(Font)

A Font is created by Font(String name, int style, int size)

Drawing and Filling - Various draw, fill methods

Clipping - g.setClip(Shape) or g.setClip(x, y, width, height)

Graphics class is an abstract class. It cannot be created. But an instance can be obtained in 2 ways.

Every component has an associated graphics context. Get this using getGraphics method.

Given an existing Graphics object, call create() on that object to create a new one.

In both cases, after its use call dispose method on Graphics, to free the resources. We shouldn't call dispose on the graphics context passed into paint() method, since it's just temporarily made available.

JVM calls paint() spontaneously under 4 circumstances

After exposure

After de-iconification

Shortly after init returns (Applets only)

Browser returns to a page contains the Applet (Applets only)

In all cases, clip region is set appropriately. If only a small portion is exposed, no time is wasted in drawing already drawn pixels.

Programs can also call paint(). But normally they achieve this by calling repaint(). Repaint() schedules a call to update() method (every 100 ms in most platforms). This is to ensure that JVM is never overwhelmed with the events.

update() restores the component's background color and calls paint(). If you don't want to erase the previously drawn content, override update() and just call paint() from it. (A common practice).

Event handlers that need to modify the screen according to input events, usually store the state information in instance variables and call repaint().

Images can be created from empty (using createImage(int width, int height) method) or loaded from external image files (using getImage() method in Toolkit class). Then they can be modified using the graphics context associated with the image. They can be drawn on the component using the drawImage method of the Graphics context of the component.