This Paint interface defines how color patterns can be generated for Graphics2D operations. A class implementing the Paint interface is added to the Graphics2D context in order to define the color pattern used by the draw and fill methods.

Instances of classes implementing Paint must be read-only because the Graphics2D does not clone these objects when they are set as an attribute with the setPaint method or when the Graphics2D object is itself cloned.

@version
1.27, 12/19/03
Represents image data that is guaranteed to be either completely opaque, with an alpha value of 1.0, or completely transparent, with an alpha value of 0.0.
Represents image data that is guaranteed to be completely opaque, meaning that all pixels have an alpha value of 1.0.
Represents image data that contains or might contain arbitrary alpha values between and including 0.0 and 1.0.
Creates and returns a PaintContext used to generate the color pattern. Since the ColorModel argument to createContext is only a hint, implementations of Paint should accept a null argument for ColorModel. Note that if the application does not prefer a specific ColorModel, the null ColorModel argument will give the Paint implementation full leeway in using the most efficient ColorModel it prefers for its raster processing.

Since the API documentation was not specific about this in releases before 1.4, there may be implementations of Paint that do not accept a null ColorModel argument. If a developer is writing code which passes a null ColorModel argument to the createContext method of Paint objects from arbitrary sources it would be wise to code defensively by manufacturing a non-null ColorModel for those objects which throw a NullPointerException.

Parameters
cmthe {@link ColorModel} that receives the Paint data. This is used only as a hint.
deviceBoundsthe device space bounding box of the graphics primitive being rendered
userBoundsthe user space bounding box of the graphics primitive being rendered
xformthe {@link AffineTransform} from user space into device space
hintsthe hint that the context object uses to choose between rendering alternatives
Return
the PaintContext for generating color patterns
See Also
Returns the type of this Transparency.
Return
the field type of this Transparency, which is either OPAQUE, BITMASK or TRANSLUCENT.