JAVA offers a variety of functions dedicated to the manipulation of
images, as well a Graphics class which implements the usual
set of drawing primitives.
The support for using images is spread out between the java.applet,
java.awt
and java.awt.image packages. The latter package contains the support
for manipulating images that have been already loaded. The loading of
an image is achieved through the getImage() method (ie. a subroutine
or function) of an Applet instance
(ie. the Applet might be attached to execute in more than one place independently)
by supplying a URL
parameter (ie. the path name of the image to be loaded).
To display an image one invokes the drawImage() method of the Graphics object which is passed to the applet's update() or paint() method. One can keep track of the state of the image(s) using an instance of a MediaTracker class and use the methods provided. The ImageObserver interface can be used for even closer monitoring of an image.