This book provides an overview of Java development on Mac OS X and discusses the available features. It also provides simple examples on using the development tools available with Mac OS X.

This book is for the Java developer interested in writing Java applications on Mac OS X version 10.2 with Java 2 Standard Edition (J2SE) version 1.3.1. It does not discuss Java 2 Standard Edition version 1.4 on Mac OS X. Information on previous versions of Java on Mac OS X can be found in the Release Notes at http://developer.apple.com/documentation/java. It is primarily geared toward developers of pure Java applications, but it will also be useful for Cocoa Java development andWebObjects Java development.

This is not a tutorial for the Java language. If you are not already proficient in Java, this document will still be helpful to you but it will not teach you about the Java language and J2SE packages. Many resources exist in print and on theWeb for learning the Java programming language.

Free Ebook Computer Programming : Java 1.3.1 Development for Mac OS X.pdf

The Mac OS X implementation of the Java2D API is based on Apple's Quartz graphics engine. The Quartz graphics system improves drawing quality over other platforms' Java 2D implementation. Because Java on Mac OS X draws its graphics with Quartz, you might notice that images drawn do not match the Sun Java 2D implementation pixel for pixel, especially when anti-aliasing is on. This is because Quartz's anti-aliasing algorithms for both line art and text are different from Sun's default implementations, so the rendered pixels do not match exactly. Since anti-aliasing is implemented through the operating system itself, it does not hinder graphics performance. Turning it off for your Java application will probably not affect the speed up your code.........more

In Mac OS X, windows are double-buffered, this includes Java windows. Java on Mac OS X attempts to flush the buffer to the screen often enough to have good drawing behavior without compromising performance. If for some reason you need to force window buffers to be flushed immediately, you may do so with Toolkit.sync.

Mac OS X provides hardware graphics acceleration for your Java Swing graphics on computers whose video cards have 16 MB or more of video RAM. If enabled, this technology passes Swing and Java 2D graphics calls directly to the video card. This can result in significant speed increases for your graphics-intensive Java applications. See "Modifying the Default Settings for Hardware Graphics Acceleration" (page 51) for information on changing the default settings of the hardware graphics acceleration.

Anti-aliasing is on by default for text and graphics, but it can be turned off using the properties described in "Mac OS X-Specific Properties" (page 81), or by calling java.awt.Graphics.setRenderingHint within your Java application.With anti-aliasing on, drawing shapes over each other may cause different results than in Java 1.1. For example, drawing a white line on top of a black line does not completely erase the line; the compositing rules leave some gray pixels around the edges. Also, drawing text multiple times in the same place causes the partially-covered pixels along the edges to get darker and darker, making the text look smudged.

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