Painting from a Graphics object?

[Massif]

I'm having trouble getting my head around Graphics objects and the paint method. Here's my predicament:

I have a class called DrawSurface which extends JPanel. The only thing that I changed was the paint method which I will use to draw on the DrawSurface. I have a bunch of coordinates that I want to draw onto the DrawSurface. It's not all going to fit on the screen, so I want to use a scrollbar to pan along the drawing. Is there a way that I can draw the entire drawing onto an offscreen Graphics object and then display a portion of that Graphics object on the DrawSurface depending on where the scrollbar is? I know that it's possible to draw a portion of an Image object onto a Graphics object, but what about Graphics to Graphics. Or is there an easier way that I'm overlooking?

[Massif]

Wow, why is it always that right after I ask a question I end up figuring it out?

I created a BufferedImage object called img and created a Graphics object using img.getGraphics(). Whatever I draw on the Graphics object gets added to the BufferedImage and then I can use drawImage to paint a portion onto another Graphics object.

Confusing, but I guess it makes sense.

[Massif]

Another question, might as well post it in the same thread.
Is it possible to specify exact width/height of characters that are being drawn to a graphics object? The only method I can see of altering size is the setFont method, but that only lets you do font size.

[Massif]

Well I didn't find how to set the width of a font, but I found how to find the length of a string in pixels. I just used the FontMetrics class. I found out how to do it here:

http://www.javalobby.org/forums/thre...16925&tstart=0

[graviton]

by the way: it's a nice approach to do make an big offscreen image and just show a clip.
but why don't you use the JScrollPane? It just suports that. And has scrollbars included already

[Massif]

I was thinking about doing it that way, but this worked out fine.