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Chapter 13
Painting
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Some objects have default appearance. When they are
created, OS decorates with a pre-defined appearance.
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Some components don’t have any intrinsic appearance.
These are Applet, Panel, Frame and Canvas. For these objects paint()
method is used to render them.
public void paint(Graphics
g)
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The paint() method provides a graphics context (an
instance of Graphics class) for drawing. This is passed as a method
argument.
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A Graphics
object encapsulates state information needed for the basic rendering
operations that Java supports. This state information includes the
following properties:
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The Component
object on which to draw.
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A translation origin for rendering and clipping
coordinates.
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The current clip.
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The current color.
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The current font.
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The current logical pixel operation function (XOR or
Paint).
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The current XOR alternation color.
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We can use this Graphics object to achieve the following
functionality:
1.
Selecting a color – g.setColor(Color)
There are 13 predefined
colors in Color class. Or create a new color using Color(R,G,B)
2.
Selecting a Font – g.setFont(Font)
A Font is created by
Font(String name, int style, int size)
3.
Drawing and Filling – Various draw, fill methods
4.
Clipping – g.setClip(Shape) or g.setClip(x, y, width, height)
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Graphics class is an abstract class. It cannot be created.
But an instance can be obtained in 2 ways.
1.
Every component has an associated graphics context. Get this
using getGraphics method.
2.
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.
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JVM calls paint() spontaneously under 4 circumstances
1.
After exposure
2.
After de-iconification
3.
Shortly after init returns (Applets only)
4.
Browser returns to a page contains the Applet (Applets only)
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In all cases, clip region is set appropriately. If only a
small portion is exposed, no time is wasted in drawing already drawn
pixels.
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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.
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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).
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Event handlers that need to modify the screen according to
input events, usually store the state information in instance variables
and call repaint().
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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.
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