CP2003 - Principles of Programming Languages Page 1 of 30 Java GUIs II

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The Class Graphics and Painting

• All graphical user interface systems have a concept of a graphics data structure to store context-specific information about a drawing area.

• This drawing area could be the whole screen, a portion of the screen (component, window, frame, ...) or even a printer.

• Benefits:
  • Programmer can address each different drawing area on its own.

  • Graphics data structure is device independent.

• In Java:
  • Graphics data structure is represented by abstract class Graphics.

  • Each Component has its associated Graphics object.

Marc Gysin, James Cook University.

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