Making text blink in a JPanel?

[blackcloud72]

Hello everyone, I am a student learning Java and need some help getting text to flash or blink. The text I want to do this with is "Which Way" in my drawstring method. Any help would be much appreciated.

import java.awt.*;
import java.awt.event.*;
import java.awt.geom.GeneralPath;
import java.util.Random;
import java.awt.Font;
import javax.swing.*;

public class Shapes extends JPanel {

    public void init() {
        setBackground(Color.BLACK);
    }

    //TM Sets X,Y Grid as Integer
    public void drawShapes(int w, int h, Graphics2D z) {
        GeneralPath draw = new GeneralPath(GeneralPath.WIND_EVEN_ODD);


        //TM Sets Random generator
        Random rx = new Random();

        //Starts drawing an Arrow
        draw.moveTo(w * .5f, h * .25f);
        draw.lineTo(w * .4f, h * .50f);
        draw.lineTo(w * .45f, h * .50f);
        draw.lineTo(w * .45f, h * .75f);

        draw.lineTo(w * .55f, h * .75f);
        draw.lineTo(w * .55f, h * .50f);
        draw.lineTo(w * .6f, h * .50f);
        draw.lineTo(w * .5f, h * .25f);
        //TM Ends drawing an Arrow

        //TM Fills interior of arrow with color
        z.fill(draw);

        //TM Color Chosen by random generator
        z.setColor(new Color(rx.nextInt(256),
                rx.nextInt(256), rx.nextInt(256)));


        //TM Loop for chosing XY location, font and color for text

        int y = 1;
        while (y < 11) {

            //TM Sets Fonts
            String fonts[] = {"Serif", "Monospaced", "Serif", "Bold", "Serif", "Italic",
                "SansSerif", "Dialog", "DialogInput"
            };


            //TM Colors
            z.setColor(new Color(rx.nextInt(256),
                    rx.nextInt(256), rx.nextInt(256)));
            //TM Font chosen + size
            z.setFont(new Font(fonts[rx.nextInt(5)], rx.nextInt(10), 26));
           
            //TM Outputs msg within specified range
            z.drawString("Which Way? ", rx.nextInt(400), rx.nextInt(500));

            y++;

        }
    }

   
    public void paint(Graphics g) {
        Graphics2D z = (Graphics2D) g;
        Dimension d = getSize();
        z.setBackground(getBackground());
        z.clearRect(0, 0, d.width, d.height);
        z.setRenderingHint(RenderingHints.KEY_ANTIALIASING,
                RenderingHints.VALUE_ANTIALIAS_ON);
        drawShapes(d.width, d.height, z);
    }

    public static void main(String arg[]) {
        final Shapes x = new Shapes();
        x.init();
        JFrame f = new JFrame("Tom's 2d Shape Assignment");  //TM Adds title to JPanel
        f.addWindowListener(new WindowAdapter() {

            public void windowClosing(WindowEvent e) {
                System.exit(0);
            }
        });

        //TM Set Size of JPanel & Centers
        f.getContentPane().add("Center", x);
        f.pack();
        f.setSize(new Dimension(600, 600));
        f.show();
    }
}

[stultuske]

haven't got the time to read it all and think it over, but I remember I did something like that once, by adding a small thread to my application, which would make the text to be "repainted" every couple of seconds.

maybe you can do something similar?

[Ezzaral]

Easy to do with a Swing Timer that toggles a "paint string" boolean on and off and calls repaint(). Just have your paint method check that variable before drawing the string.