Getting the position of a component in a container for repainting

Question

This may be a stupid question but, I want to get the position of a custom component as it lays in a JFrame. This is needed for a repaint of the special component. getX() and getY() return the origin of the component as it is painted in paintComponent(). How might this be done without messy parameters to an overridden repaint method?
I need the position so that I can cut out a portion of an underlying background image in the JFrame, so that I can repaint the component's text without clearing away the image or painting over it with a color. If anyone has a better idea, I'm all ears. . .
Thanks.

Answer 1

as a near solution to my problem, I have created the following method to locate the exact origin of the custom component:
     private int[] getAbsolutePosition(Component c)
          int pos[] = {this.getX(), this.getY()};
          int x = 0;
          int y = 0;
          Container parent = c.getParent();
          while (parent != null)
               x = parent.getX();
               pos[0] += x; // append next width
               y = parent.getY();
               pos[1] += y; // append next height
               parent = parent.getParent();
          pos[0] -= x;     // Remove the position of the parent frame
          pos[1] -= y;     // from the totals.
          return pos;
     }The custom component has 3 JPanels, one Container, and a JFrame beneath it. I remove the JFrame positions becuase they would mess things up. Still, the x values it returns are off by a small but noticible amount. Does anyone know what might account for this?