Java Swing Graphics2D drawString slow initiation?

Question

I have encountered a very strange behavior of Java Graphics2D draw String.

If I set a font name, such as

Font f = new Font("Helvetica", Font.PLAIN, 10);

Then on the screen device the first call to g2D.drawString can take as much as 600ms. This creates a screen jam, it's not significant but quite annoying.

Switching the font name to defaults such as "Monospaced" will solve the problem.

Anyone has encountered similar issues?

Why not load the required `Font` instances at start-up? – Andrew Thompson Apr 28 '12 at 02:53 — Andrew Thompson, Apr 28 '12 at 02:53
Or request the font family, `Font.SANS_SERIF`? – trashgod Apr 28 '12 at 03:24 — trashgod, Apr 28 '12 at 03:24

score 3 · Accepted Answer · answered Apr 28 '12 at 06:11

3

That happens because you are loading the Font inside the paint method (when you paint the string first time), which is a bad thing to do. You should either set component's font if it is the only font you are using or atleast load it before painting the component.

answered Apr 28 '12 at 06:11

Mikle Garin

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Hi @mgarin no I made sure that the Font was not loaded within the paint method. I loaded the font in the constructor, and it took ridiculously long time for the first draw. Another weird thing is if I create a buffered image, the bufferedImage.createGraphics() can take 500 - 600ms to finish too. I don't know whether it's because of the iMac I am using - I am running Windows 7 on a iMac 27. Thank you for your answer! – Gang Su May 02 '12 at 15:02
2

How exactly do you load Font before the paint method call? Simply adding a line like "Font font = new Font(...);" will not initialize that Font - it will just create a Font object to manipulate actual font that will be loaded on first real paint call. I guess bufferedImage.createGraphics() can take a while if you are creating some large image (for e.g. 5000x5000) but i am not sure - better provide some code with that problem in a separate question... – Mikle Garin May 02 '12 at 15:27
@MikleGarin Did you figure out how to load the font? I can't seem to figure it out. – Indiana Kernick Mar 02 '19 at 05:10
@Kerndog73 not really, but it (probably) shouldn't be too hard to figure out - just need to debug the `Font` class and see what exactly gets initialized upon actual `Font` usage and then look for options `Font` class provides to initialize that and forcefully do that when you need to. – Mikle Garin Mar 02 '19 at 10:01

Java Swing Graphics2D drawString slow initiation?

1 Answers1