The drawString() method

Ordinarily, a child class inherits every method defined in its parent class. A child overrides a method in its parent by defining a new method with the same signature. Now, for a child object, the new method will be used in place of the parent's method.

When the Java system needs to paint a MyFrame object it first draws most of the picture and then calls paint() in the MyFrame object to do whatever extra the programmer wants. The first part of the work is vital. It involves interacting with the graphics of the computer system and controling the graphics board. Our paint() looks like this:

public void paint ( Graphics g )
{
  // draw a String at location x=10 y=50
  g.drawString("A MyFrame object", 10, 50 );
} 

The parameter g is a reference to a Graphics object. The Graphics object represents the part of the frame that you can draw on. When the system calls paint(), the system provides a value for this parameter. One of the methods of Graphics is drawString(String st, int X, int Y) which draws a string on the graphics area at location starting X pixels from the left and Y pixels from the top.

Here is MyFrame again, with a few changes.

class MyFrame extends Frame
{
  public void paint ( Graphics g )
  {
    g.drawString( , , ,  );
  }

}