Lesson: Overview of the Java 2D API Concepts
The Java 2D™ API provides two-dimensional graphics, text, and imaging capabilities for Java™ programs through extensions to the Abstract Windowing Toolkit (AWT). This comprehensive rendering package supports line art, text, and images in a flexible, full-featured framework for developing richer user interfaces, sophisticated drawing programs, and image editors. Java 2D objects exist on a plane called user coordinate space, or just user space. When objects are rendered on a screen or a printer, user space coordinates are transformed to device space coordinates. The following links are useful to start learning about the Java 2D API:
The Java 2D API provides following capabilities:
- A uniform rendering model for display devices and printers
- A wide range of geometric primitives, such as curves, rectangles, and ellipses, as well as a mechanism for rendering virtually any geometric shape
- Mechanisms for performing hit detection on shapes, text, and images
- A compositing model that provides control over how overlapping objects are rendered
- Enhanced color support that facilitates color management
- Support for printing complex documents
- Control of the quality of the rendering through the use of rendering hints
These topics are discussed in the following sections:
