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 the new method will be used in place of the parent's method in a child object.

When the Java system needs to paint a MyFrame object it first does most of the work 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. After all of that you get to ask for the little extra bit that you are interested in. 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 gives it this parameter. One of its methods 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(________, __________, ________);
  }

}