How is the challenge ...

[J Maruti]

is it possible to paint a table in AWT?

[paul wheaton]

I've been doing almost nothing but for the last coupla months. My grand applet probably won't be viewable to the public for a few more months yet, however.

[J Maruti]

i dont understand. can u pls explain?

[paul wheaton]

Um, I do it in gray?
Maybe we should try this from the other direction. What sort of table do you have and what sort of painting do you want to do?

[J Maruti]

well.
i want to have table which can represent thousands of rows and maybe 10-15 columns.
FIY
it is like the grid (sheridian) in VB. i know of a site where even the source code is present. but then it runs to 10,000 lines code (it is excellent, though) and i am not able to understand. i even contacted the person who posted the code for assistance in understanding the code. but the person is extremely busy.

[paul wheaton]

I limit my results to about a thousand. And I have six to ten columns. I make each row a fixed height and width. The I extend Panel to create a lightweight component that will hold all of the results. I draw images and text on the lightweight component and display it in a scrollPane.
Naturally, there is a bit more detail, but you get the idea. It turned out to be pretty simple and it works great.

[J Maruti]

thanks for the logic outline.
i am also proceeding in the same direction. my problem is how i paint the header row of titles. also i need to increase the column when the user drags the edge of any column.
btw, how would u do this in visual c++. i need to do this as it appears that the next version of IE may not support java at all. this appears to be a rumour.

[paul wheaton]

I SPIT UPON VISUAL C++!
I used to be a DOS programmer and when the time came to move my stuff to Windows I struggled with Visual C++ for six months. I knew there had to be a better way and that was when I first investigated Java.
I worked in all sorts of wacky header stuff. The key is to stick to OO and take an iterative approach. Make something that shows plain results. I made some of my results do someting when I clicked on it. Then work in headers. Then work in headers that do cool things.
I'm now a huge fan of OO, the iterative approach (with no iteration longer than two weeks - as Martin Fowler suggests) and refactoring. I think this process generates the best solutions.