Chapter 18, Tables, and Chapter 22, Printing, are excerpted from
the recently
published book, Swing, by Matthew Robinson and Pavel
Vorobiev, and
published by Manning Publications Company. (Chapter 18 is
available both
online and as a downloadable file; and Chapter 22 is available as
a
downloadable file.)
Note from the
authors:
Our goal in writing
Swing was to produce a book that contains enough
explanation and examples to satisfy the most demanding Swing
developer,
while still catering to the motivated newcomer. From day one our
manuscript has been freely available on the web. By responding and
reacting to
all
feedback
and suggestions we received, this book has taken on many diverse
perspectives. Together with our own efforts, the Swing developer
community
has helped shape this book into its current form.
At a time when there are so many Swing books to choose from, it
is difficult
to claim that a new book on the subject might be worth adding to
one's
collection. This is why we chose to write a fast-paced,
example-based book
that takes the reader farther than just the basics of learning
how to work
with the API. Swing covers this ground quickly, but
focuses mainly on
the
construction of realistic Swing-based applications. These
examples can often
serve as starting points for more involved projects, and several
are
continually extended and enhanced as the book progresses.
Chapters 18 and 22 (covering tables and printing respectively)
are presented here to
demonstrate the capabilities of Swing that are typically left
unrevealed in
other Swing books. Chapter 18 brings the reader up to speed
rather quickly
with the JTable
API, and then steps through the
construction of a stocks
table application, an expense report editor, and a JavaBeansTM property
editor. Chapter 22 covers the Java 2 printing API in terms of
Swing, and
shows how it can be used to write a custom-print preview
component, print
multiple page images, print styled text, and print tables
(building on the
stocks table application from Chapter 18). The custom-print
preview
component can be easily plugged in to any print-aware Swing-based
application, and provides a very convenient mechanism for
debugging print
code without having to use and actual printer.
We hope these chapters prove interesting and useful. Any
questions or
comments to the authors can be posted at the book's publicly
accessible
online forum at http://www.manning.com/robinson.
Swing can be purchased from:
Manning
Amazon
Borders
Fatbrain
About the Authors
Matthew Robinson and Pavel Vorobiev are
developers for
Netfish Technologies. Robinson is the author of a monthly online
column in
"The Swing Connection". He recently received the first
place award
in
the 1999 ACM/IBM Quest for Java technology. Vorobiev is a
certified Java
programming developer and the author of four books about Java
programming. He
has a Ph.D. in Physics and Mathematics.
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