Thread: Animation and double buffering

I have a class for which I am not happy with the animation. I've simplified it to a simple square moving accross the screen. My problem is that the screen doesn't clear and so instead of a moving box, I get a thick line. I've tried a few attempts to fix this below. I've read about double-buffering and have tried to implement this, but something is missing. Can you help point out my issue?

Original class (a moving box is a line):

import java.awt.*;
import java.awt.geom.*;
import javax.swing.*;
 
public class RightPane extends JApplet implements Runnable {
  int frame;
  Thread  animator;
 
  public void start() {
    frame = 0;
    animator = new Thread(this);
    animator.start();
  }
 
  public void run() {
    long tm = System.currentTimeMillis();
    while(Thread.currentThread() == animator) {
      repaint();
 
      try {
        tm += 50; // 50 ms iteration rate
        Thread.sleep(Math.max(0, tm - System.currentTimeMillis() ) );
      } 
      catch (InterruptedException e) {  break;  }
 
      frame++;
 
      if (frame == 100) // Freeze the animation here
        this.stop();
    }
  }
 
  public void stop()  {
    animator = null;
  }
 
  public void paint(Graphics g) {
    Graphics2D g2 = (Graphics2D) g;
    Dimension  d  = this.getSize();
 
    g2.setPaint( Color.red );
    g2.fill ( new Rectangle2D.Double( d.width*frame/100, d.height*frame/100, 10, 10) );
  }
}

This was my first attempt to fix this. It does help, but causes significant flashing:

  public void paint(Graphics g) {
 
    super.paint(g); // Adding this line will cause flashing, 
                    //    but at least everything clears
 
    Graphics2D g2 = (Graphics2D) g;
    Dimension  d  = this.getSize();
 
    g2.setPaint( Color.red );
    g2.fill ( new Rectangle2D.Double( d.width*frame/100, d.height*frame/100, 10, 10) );
  }

Implementing the update() function was my second attempt to fix this. This is how I read to implement double-buffering. Unfortunately, it has no effect and I'm not sure what's wrong:

  private Image dbImage;
  private Graphics dbg;
 
  public void update(Graphics g) {
 
    if (dbImage == null)
    {
      dbImage = createImage (this.getSize().width, this.getSize().height);
      dbg = dbImage.getGraphics();
    }
 
    dbg.setColor (getBackground ());
    dbg.fillRect (0, 0, this.getSize().width, this.getSize().height);
 
    dbg.setColor (getForeground());
    paint (dbg);
 
    g.drawImage (dbImage, 0, 0, this);
  }

Don't override the paint() method, ever. Read this article on Custom Painting.

Ok so I read this article. The only difference that I see between what I did and what they did was that they used paintComponent() instead of paint(). I've tried to over-ride this instead, but now there is no painting performed.

Another difference is that they have inherited from JPanel instead of JApplet. I've tried that too in an attempt to get paintComponent() to be used, but I'm having some conflicts with the Runnable implementation. The output looks like so:

stew@Romulus ~/Course/Week4-DQ2 $ javac *.java
MainFrame.java:24: error: cannot find symbol
rightPanel.start();
^
symbol: method start()
location: variable rightPanel of type JPanel
1 error

I'll keep trying to figure out another way to do this but what is the reason why the AWT paint() isn't appropriate?

--- Update ---

Update:
I've changed the type of object of the instantiation from JPanel to RightPane, now I'm getting runtime errors with messages like this:
at javax.swing.JComponent.paint(JComponent.java:1054)
at RightPane.paintComponent(RightPane.java:58)
at javax.swing.JComponent.paint(JComponent.java:1054)
at RightPane.paintComponent(RightPane.java:58)
at javax.swing.JComponent.paint(JComponent.java:1054)
at RightPane.paintComponent(RightPane.java:58)
at javax.swing.JComponent.paint(JComponent.java:1054)
at RightPane.paintComponent(RightPane.java:58)
at javax.swing.JComponent.paint(JComponent.java:1054)
at RightPane.paintComponent(RightPane.java:58)
at javax.swing.JComponent.paint(JComponent.java:1054)
at RightPane.paintComponent(RightPane.java:58)
at javax.swing.JComponent.paint(JComponent.java:1054)
at RightPane.paintComponent(RightPane.java:58)
at javax.swing.JComponent.paint(JComponent.java:1054)
at RightPane.paintComponent(RightPane.java:58)
at javax.swing.JComponent.paint(JComponent.java:1054)
at RightPane.paintComponent(RightPane.java:58)
at javax.swing.JComponent.paint(JComponent.java:1054)
at RightPane.paintComponent(RightPane.java:58)
at javax.swing.JComponent.paint(JComponent.java:1054)

Are you calling repaint() in the paintComponent() method? If so, that will set up an infinite loop. I was hoping you'd get those details from the Custom Painting Lesson.

Got it,

In paintComponent() I was still calling super.paint(). Calling super.paintComponent() fixed this.

Thanks for your awesome help. The program is 100% now.

--- Update ---

Total changes:

RightPane extends JPanel instead of JApplet.

The parent class instantiates a RightPane object instead of JApplet right = new RightPane()

Called paintComponent instead of paint()

Called super.paintComponent() at the start of paintComponent().