Soft Clipping with Java 2D
October 1st, 2006
The current application that I'm coding uses an interface composed mostly of rounded rectangles. Initially it looked really cool. I later added transparency to some of the panels so that the parent panel's background would show through. On the Mac, it looked really great. I had since ran the application on Windows and a few of my decisions regarding how I made the rounded rectangle backgrounds came back to haunt me.
With a little more testing, I discovered that the issues lied with anti-aliasing and clipping using Graphics2D. Since this issue was purely asthetic, I moved on to more pressing issues. Then, about a week later I got my monthly Tech Tips from Sun. Talk about reading my mind. The Java 2D Trickery - Core Java Technologies Technical Tips contains 2 excellent Java 2D tips. The first one titled Java 2D Soft Clipping
was the answer I needed.
After about 5 minutes, the problem was resolved and it now looks great on both platforms. Excellent tip! Well done Chris Campbell! I suggest you check it out and subscribe if you haven't already done so.
