Re: Best way to force a JComponent to repaint itself

Peter Duniho wrote:
On Wed, 13 Aug 2008 22:12:33 -0700, zerg <zerg@xxxxxxxx> wrote:

Suspect what you will, but I did indeed examine the JComponent API docs, and there were three public methods associated with repainting -- not counting that repaint() had two overloads.

I count FIVE overloads of repaint().

In the classes themselves, yes. In the JComponent method listing in the API documentation, there are two. It is the JComponent method listing in the API documentation that I was consulting, for obvious reasons.

Java is object-oriented programming. You have to look at

Rest of pedantic and rather insulting paragraph deleted. Have I not made it abundantly clear by now that your condescending and insulting attitude is unwelcome and you should not reply to me with such an attitude again? Either reply neutrally, or reply in a friendly manner, or do not reply at all. (How you reply to somebody other than me is, of course, between you and them.)

Anything that I say is well-formed, and I am not in the mood to be publicly insulted by you or anyone else here. I came here asking for advice in good faith and I don't appreciate being treated in such a manner.

Well, unfortunately for you, you're not in a position to dictate

Rest of hostility deleted.

What the hell is your problem? Why are you being hostile toward me, when I had never done anything malicious to you, or even inadvertently slighted you?

Actually, don't answer that. It doesn't matter. Your opinion of me is not of any interest to me. Only the answer to whatever question I asked. When you have a nasty opinion of someone, for whatever reason, and it's not a politician or some other important public figure, you should keep it to yourself -- didn't your mother teach you any manners?

Please just answer each question or ignore it, WITHOUT slipping in any snide remarks, off-topic asides, hostility, or other pointlessness that can serve no useful purpose but does risk starting a fight.

People get tired of responding to questions that are easily answered
simply by looking at the documentation.

The problem is when people form opinions of PEOPLE, based on their OPINION of what is "easily" answered "simply" by looking at the documentation, and then BROADCAST that opinion for some stupid reason instead of just keeping it to themselves!

When you make your question look like one of those, you're not going
to get the answer you want

I didn't make my question look like anything in particular. I simply posted a good-faith question that had a simple and straightforward answer, but not one that *I* found obvious from perusing the portions of the docs that were immediately relevant.

If you will not answer properly questions that YOU THINK, in YOUR HUMBLE OPINION, are "stupid", then you should not post any follow-up to those questions at all. You should NOT post a bunch of insults, or pry into other peoples' business, or tell the world that you refuse to answer "stupid" questions like you just did above. You should simply ignore it if you are unwilling to answer it properly, with an actual, honest answer.

What about that is so goddamn difficult for you to understand? It's Manners 101, for God's sake. Everyone is supposed to learn basic manners by the time their age is two digits long. Unfortunately, the internet appears to be populated with a lot of people who either somehow missed out on that particular part of their grade-school curriculum or seem to think they needn't bother when they're online because "it's all just numbers and code, not real people" (yes, I've actually heard this lame excuse, and on more than one occasion, in various places for various online misbehaviors) or because they simply feel they can get away with it because whoever they're treating poorly isn't physically present to punch them in the goddamn nose.

To which my answer is, "Would you be this rude over the goddamn phone? No? Then you shouldn't be over the goddamn Internet, either!"

That's more or less what I did, except that I simply asked directly for the answer to the question that I had, instead of for clarification of a particular bit of the docs.

Or, in other words, what I said you should do is MUCH more than what you actually did.

What you said I should do was completely irrelevant to the question that I asked. (To be relevant, it would have to have taken the form of a snippet of Java code.)

There's nothing at all in your original post to suggest that you had bothered to look at anything in the documentation.

How utterly fascinating. And irrelevant. I asked a question about something other than the documentation. Your role is then to answer it or ignore it, whichever you please, not to answer something completely unrelated to the question actually asked, ask questions of your own, or (especially) start badmouthing people in public for no good reason.

If you insist that every question contain some remark asserting that the poster did read some documentation, then I will happily oblige and add boilerplate to that effect to every question that I ask here in the future, silly though that seems to me.

And to top it off, you are WRONG. There IS something in my original post to suggest that I looked at the documentation. There are three method names. Where did you think I got my three candidates? Out of a hat? Of course not -- I got them by browsing the list of JComponent methods in the JComponent API docs. If I saw a question asking what method was best to address a particular issue at a particular level of abstraction, and that listed several that the poster thought might be applicable, my first guess as to how they came by the list would be "by perusing the class's API docs, specifically the method listing", if it occurred to me to even wonder how they constructed the list at all. It probably wouldn't, seeing as it's not relevant; I'd probably just answer the question, given that I knew the answer or found the docs easier to interpret than they presumably did.

I think a bit of IETF wisdom is applicable to human interaction online every bit as much as it is to machine interaction online: "you should very strictly follow the standard in what you send, but be liberal in what you'll accept".

The former, applied to humans, means mind your manners; the latter means try to remain civil and don't reject peoples' good-faith questions with nasty responses analogous to error messages just because YOU think there's something they should have done differently.

I follow that particular bit of advice. It is becoming quite apparent that you not only do not, but seem to explicitly and willfully REFUSE to do so out of sheer bloody-mindedness. I'd plonk you, but I have to wait for this thread to die down first so that I can respond to any more insulting nonsense you post to it and thereby reduce the risk of anyone coming away from this thread with the mistaken impression that there's any truth to what you've said about me. :-P

Fine. From now on, when I have a highly specific question like "what is the best way to force a JComponent to repaint itself?", instead of just asking "what is the best way to force a JComponent to repaint itself?", I will do as you advise here and say "I've read the documentation, but still have a question: what is the best way to force a JComponent to repaint itself?" -- satisfied?

It's not a question of whether I'm satisfied.

It sure seems like it, particularly when you threaten, above, to respond in a way that someone "won't like" to any question that you find unsatisfactory according to fairly vague criteria. Criteria that you don't state up-front before attacking people, I might add, and that furthermore can very easily be innocently violated by someone that is acting in good faith.

Shame on you!

It's a question of whether you have any interest in asking questions in a way that is likely to get them answered.

At this point, I couldn't possibly care less what ways of asking questions will be most likely to get you to answer them. Indeed, I couldn't care less if you never answered another question of mine again.

In fact, based on how you chose to answer this last one, I'd PREFER it if you never answered another question of mine again!

Oh, and another unsolicited manners lesson for you: it is considered rude when someone presumes to speak for everyone else in a large forum of any sort. As you do above, when you say "likely to get them answered" rather than "likely to get me to answer them", even though the only person whose policy on answering questions that you can either control or speak about with authority is your own personal one. Others will answer whatever questions they please, including ones that you wouldn't answer (or would answer in a nasty and useless way instead of properly), whether you like it or not.

As for your proposed alternative question format, no...that's not going to get your question answered with any more enthusiasm.

Fine, then please killfile me. Obviously you won't like my questions, for whatever reason and despite the fact that there's nothing at all wrong with them in any objective sense, and obviously you don't like me, so do us both a favor and simply ignore me from now on. (That means don't bother replying to this post, either.)

If you have a question about what you've read in the documentation,
you need to be specific about that.

I had a question about which method was best to do a particular job at a particular level of abstraction, and I was specific about that. If you interpreted it differently, that's down to YOU. If that interpretation led you to conclude that there was a problem, then it is YOUR problem. It is YOUR SUBJECTIVE OPINION. Your subjective opinions should have no bearing on any technical information you post here, nor should it have any influence on how polite you are to someone here -- you should either be polite or say nothing at all. If you can't stand someone and can't stomach making the effort to reply to them civilly then exercise the latter option, and if you feel a knee-jerk impulse to lash out every time you see a post by some person, you should killfile them. That is Usenet etiquette 101.

Simply saying "I've read the documentation and I'd like you to tell me the answer to this question that was answered by the documentation" doesn't encourage people to be motivated to help you.

But of course I never suggested that I'd say that. I said that I'd say "I've read the documentation, but still have a question: <something specific about doing something in Java>".

To this, the proper response (other than to write none at all) is a straightforward answer to the question. If, for some reason, it irrelevantly occurs to you to wonder why I didn't find the answer in the documentation, then you may ask that AS WELL AS answering my question, POLITELY, in particular this means WITHOUT implying that I'm some sort of idiot or clueless newb. Perhaps, if you ask nicely, I'll even answer your question, asked irrelevantly out of idle curiosity. Of course, it's possible that for whatever reason you won't like the answer. If that occurs, don't lash out at me; you asked, you got an answer to exactly the question you asked.

If you are not willing to answer politely, or you are not willing to answer without the answer being 100% irrelevant, then please do not post any reply at all.

If you simply ask a question that the documentation does in fact
answer, the most obvious explanation is that you haven't bothered
to look at the documentation at all.

Sometimes the most obvious explanation is wrong.

True, and irrelevant.

No, it is not irrelevant. The question of whether or not I read the documentation, or why I didn't find some particular thing there (despite looking), is what's irrelevant here. You don't need to know in order to answer. You just need to know the answer to the question you were actually posed.

Why are you so interested in who's read what documentation and why they didn't find such-and-such in it, anyway? It has no bearing on what someone asked, in typical cases, and you aren't to my knowledge involved in any effort to actually improve the documentation quality, either.

The problem of people asking RTFM questions is far too common

There is no problem here except for people like you being impolite without cause, answering with purely off-topic and useless responses, and generally being all-around jerks!

for you to expect anyone to give you the benefit of the doubt.

I expect you to give EVERYONE the benefit of the doubt or else NOT REPLY TO THEM! I expect you to do so because I expect you, as I expect all human beings, to BE POLITE, ESPECIALLY IN PUBLIC! What part of that is so difficult for you to understand?

People post questions here to get them answered, not to get sidetracked into unrelated topics to satisfy your curiosity as to peoples' motives in asking questions or for any similar such reason.

This isn't about satisfying curiosity.

Then why did you ask me questions whose answers you did not need in order to correctly and concisely and politely answer MY question?

It's about trying to help you understand why people aren't going
to answer RTFM questions.

Now you're being arrogant, rude, and condescending again.

Arrogant: presuming to speak for everyone in the world yet again.
Rude: I know bloody well what the "F" in "RTFM" stands for, among other things.
Condescending: you are again assuming the role of patient teacher trying to make backwards student understand something in time for the exam.

Let me make myself perfectly clear:

I DO NOT >>>CARE<<< WHY >>>YOU<<< AREN'T GOING TO ANSWER PARTICULAR QUESTIONS.

Just answer them or not, as you see fit, but either answer them politely and accurately or don't post any reply at all!

It's really that simple!

If someone wants to know what questions YOU are going to answer, they will ask you what questions YOU are going to answer. If they do not ask you what questions YOU are going to answer, don't tell them unsolicited, especially not if you have some kind of inherited inability to do so politely.

And if someone asks you what questions "people" are going to answer, the only correct response will obviously be "whatever questions they, individually and separately, FEEL like answering".

It's best to just take peoples' questions at face value, and give them a simple, correct answer that they can apply immediately. I don't know about you, but when I have a question, I'm generally interested in getting an answer as quickly as possible, and one that can be applied immediately. [...]

The very fastest way for me to get the answer to any question would be to just ask the expert.

Funny -- I find it's faster to try to find the needed information in the docs before posting something and then waiting for ages for an as-likely-or-not snarky-and-unhelpful response from some jerk who thinks his modem and sorta-anonymity gives him carte blance to tell all and sundry exactly what he thinks of them and why. :-P

But, that can be a waste of the expert's time, and as well I will learn more about the subject if I do some research myself.

And when you do so, but the answer is not apparent from the docs that were most obviously relevant (such as, say, the long list of JComponent methods)?

You ask, right?

Yet you fault me for doing the same in the same circumstances.

Shame on you!
Personally, I don't like wasting other people's time.

Then please don't waste mine with any more useless, flamey, or otherwise off-topic responses. In the future when you see a question by me please either give it a straight answer with no extra added bonus "baggage" or ignore it completely. And if you find me completely intolerable for any reason please say nothing and just killfile me. Thank you.

But the fact is, other people don't like YOU wasting their time.

If you think answering a particular question is a waste of your time, then the most time-efficient thing you can possibly do is just mark it read (or even killfile the thread) and move on, without posting any reply at all.

The only reason to post snarky, useless, and insulting replies is if you WANT to waste time, and your preferred form of time-wasting is to pick a fight and then slug it out with someone.

If that's your cup of tea, there are newsgroups expressly for that sort of purpose; comp.lang.java.programmer, however, is not one of them.

When it looks like that's what you're doing, they tend to ignore you rather than answering the question you want answered.

Fine. It's when you do neither that I get bothered.

Again, I've no interest here in making you feel bad about your choices.

Then why keep harassing and berating me? In public, at that?

I'm simply trying to offer advice that will help you understand better techniques for getting your questions answered.

I didn't ask for advice on "better techniques for getting my questions answered" by you. (And you can only speak with authority on what YOU like in a question. You seem to be conflating your own opinion of what questions YOU think are worth YOUR while to answer with some peculiar idea of some sort of universally-held opinion on the matter, as if there even were such a thing. I don't know why.

The gratuitously insulting paragraph where you imply that I'm some sort of a child has been completely ignored, save to make this remark calling you on your own childish behavior in including such pointless flamebait in your post.

And since there's nothing left, I guess this is goodbye.

Unless, of course, you for some reason think there's anything left to say here that you haven't already repeated several times. :-P
.

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