javax.swing package

[NickFitz]

public void paintComponent(Graphics g) {}

is the method you override if you want to change how a component displays.

There is a Renderer interface which allows you to change what you do with the components (i.e. you could have a PrintRenderer that dumps straight to a printer) though it's very low level and personally I've never seen it implemented.

Ah right. I implemented TreeCellRenderer back around 1999, which is why my memory of the whole setup is a bit hazy

[Cowboy Bob]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but don't Swing components delegate their painting to a Renderer object, rather than a paint method? This decoupling is what allows for pluggable UI rendering... although it's been a while since I did any Java UI stuff, so maybe I'm remembering it incorrectly

Excellent point about the UI thread

public void paintComponent(Graphics g) {}

is the method you override if you want to change how a component displays.

There is a Renderer interface which allows you to change what you do with the components (i.e. you could have a PrintRenderer that dumps straight to a printer) though it's very low level and personally I've never seen it implemented.

[NickFitz]

http://java.sun.com/docs/books/tutorial/uiswing/

As for how they fit together, basically all components extend the base component and implement a couple of methods to paint themselves and fire events. This all happens on one thread (the event despatch thread), so you should never, ever run any code of your own on the current thread or you'll lock the GUI - always run your own code inside it's own thread(s). This is the most basic mistake that most beginners make and also why there are so many crap Swing GUIs out there leading people to believe that Swing is slow.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but don't Swing components delegate their painting to a Renderer object, rather than a paint method? This decoupling is what allows for pluggable UI rendering... although it's been a while since I did any Java UI stuff, so maybe I'm remembering it incorrectly

Excellent point about the UI thread

[Cowboy Bob]

http://java.sun.com/docs/books/tutorial/uiswing/

As for how they fit together, basically all components extend the base component and implement a couple of methods to paint themselves and fire events. This all happens on one thread (the event despatch thread), so you should never, ever run any code of your own on the current thread or you'll lock the GUI - always run your own code inside it's own thread(s). This is the most basic mistake that most beginners make and also why there are so many crap Swing GUIs out there leading people to believe that Swing is slow.

[Addanc]

I've downloaded the Sun docs, great description of components in isolation. My background is comms, kernels and drivers (no GUI). I'm looking for a good coherent overview of how these GUI components fit together.

[xchaotic]

Is that not all you need?

http://java.sun.com/javase/6/docs/ap...age-frame.html

I mean it has the descriptions of all classes and methods

(TBH I only used swing calls from Perl, but what the heck).

[Addanc]

Can anybody recommend any books that provide a coherent description of the usage of the GUI javax.swing package? Proper class diagrams etc.