Layout manager issue.

Question

I was hoping that someone could shed some light on why one layout manage will allow an applet to be inserted in a class that extends JFrame but not another.
Here is the guts of the problem I have an class that extends applet to display a pie chart. I then have a seperate class that extends JFrame that display two input boxes and a button. When the user enters two fields and clicks draw the pie chart displays working with the two numbers. The JFrame class that works uses the border layout. I change the class to use gridbag, and now only the textboxes display. Can anyone help. Here is the code for the three classes.
This is the applet class....
* File: PieChart.java
* PieChart class is an Swing applet that use a pie chart
* to show the percentage. It is used by PieChartExample
* to show what percetange of a payment actually goes to
* pay interest. There is no error handling in the program.
import java.awt.*;
import java.awt.event.*;
import java.awt.geom.*;
import javax.swing.*;
public class PieChart extends JApplet {
final static Color bg = Color.white;
final static Color fg = Color.black;
private double percent;
public void init() {
//Initialize drawing colors
setBackground(bg);
setForeground(fg);
percent = 1.0;
     public void setPercentage(double pct) {
          this.percent = pct;
public void paint(Graphics g) {
Graphics2D g2 = (Graphics2D) g;
g2.setRenderingHint(RenderingHints.KEY_ANTIALIASING, RenderingHints.VALUE_ANTIALIAS_ON);
g2.setPaint(fg);
drawAnnotation(g2);
drawArc(g2, percent);
public void drawAnnotation(Graphics2D g2) {
          // draw a small green circle
          g2.setPaint(Color.green);
g2.fill(new Ellipse2D.Double(200, 200, 10,10));
// draw a small red circle
g2.setPaint(Color.red);
g2.fill(new Ellipse2D.Double(270, 200, 10, 10));
g2.setPaint(Color.black);
g2.drawString("Interest", 210, 210); // write "Interest" by green circle
g2.drawString("Principal", 280, 210); // write "Principal" by red circle
     public void drawArc(Graphics2D g2, double percent) {
// draw the interest portion
          g2.setPaint(Color.green);
          g2.fill(new Arc2D.Double(10,10,200,200, 0, percent * 360, Arc2D.PIE));
          // draw the rest (principal portion)
          g2.setPaint(Color.red);
          g2.fill(new Arc2D.Double(10,10,200,200, percent * 360, (1-percent)*360, Arc2D.PIE));
This is the JFrame class using Boarderlayout that works.
* File: PieChartExample.java
* The program demonstrate a simple use of pie chart. It takes total
* payment and interest paid from user input and draws a pie chart
* to show the percentage of interert to total payment. There is no
* error handling whatsoever in the example program, so you can see
* that it can be broken easily.
import java.awt.*;
import java.awt.event.*;
import java.awt.geom.*;
import javax.swing.*;
public class PieChartExample extends JFrame {
     final static int CHART_WIDTH = 800;
     final static int CHART_HEIGHT = 300;
     JPanel panel ;
     JLabel paymentLabel;
     JTextField paymentField;
     JLabel interestLabel;
     JTextField interestField;
     JButton show;
PieChart applet;
public PieChartExample() {
super("Pie Chart Example");
panel = new JPanel();
paymentLabel = new JLabel("Payment: $");
panel.add(paymentLabel);
paymentField = new JTextField(10);
panel.add(paymentField);
interestLabel = new JLabel("Interest: $");
panel.add(interestLabel);
interestField = new JTextField(10);
panel.add(interestField);
show = new JButton("Draw");
panel.add(show);
this.getContentPane().add("North", panel);
applet = new PieChart();
this.getContentPane().add("Center", applet);
show.addActionListener(new ActionListener() {
               public void actionPerformed(ActionEvent evt) {
                    double interest = Double.parseDouble(interestField.getText());
                    double payment = Double.parseDouble(paymentField.getText());
                    double percent = interest / payment;
                    //System.out.println("In event handler, percent is " + percent);
                    applet.setPercentage(percent);
                    applet.repaint();
private static void createAndShowGUI() {
PieChartExample f = new PieChartExample();
f.pack();
f.setSize(new Dimension(CHART_WIDTH ,CHART_HEIGHT));
f.show();
public static void main(String[] args) {
//Schedule a job for the event-dispatching thread:
//creating and showing this application's GUI.
javax.swing.SwingUtilities.invokeLater(new Runnable() {
public void run() {
createAndShowGUI();
This is the modified class to use GridBag that fails.
* File: PieChartExample2.java
* The program demonstrate a simple use of pie chart. It takes total
* payment and interest paid from user input and draws a pie chart
* to show the percentage of interert to total payment. There is no
* error handling whatsoever in the example program, so you can see
* that it can be broken easily.
import java.awt.*;
import java.awt.event.*;
import java.awt.geom.*;
import javax.swing.*;
public class PieChartExample2 extends JFrame {
     final static int CHART_WIDTH = 800;
     final static int CHART_HEIGHT = 300;
     JPanel panel ;
     JLabel paymentLabel;
     JTextField paymentField;
     JLabel interestLabel;
     JTextField interestField;
     JButton show;
PieChart applet;
public PieChartExample2() {
super("Pie Chart Example");
// Get container and set layout manager
Container contentPane = getContentPane();
GridBagLayout gridbag = new GridBagLayout();
GridBagConstraints c = new GridBagConstraints();
contentPane.setLayout(gridbag);
c.fill = GridBagConstraints.HORIZONTAL;
panel = new JPanel();
paymentLabel = new JLabel("Payment: $");
panel.add(paymentLabel);
paymentField = new JTextField(10);
panel.add(paymentField);
interestLabel = new JLabel("Interest: $");
panel.add(interestLabel);
interestField = new JTextField(10);
panel.add(interestField);
show = new JButton("Draw");
panel.add(show);
c.gridx = 0;
c.gridy = 0;
gridbag.setConstraints(panel, c);
contentPane.add(panel);
applet = new PieChart();
c.gridx = 0;
c.gridy = 1;
gridbag.setConstraints(applet, c);
contentPane.add(applet);
show.addActionListener(new ActionListener() {
               public void actionPerformed(ActionEvent evt) {
                    double interest = Double.parseDouble(interestField.getText());
                    double payment = Double.parseDouble(paymentField.getText());
                    double percent = interest / payment;
                    //System.out.println("In event handler, percent is " + percent);
                    applet.setPercentage(percent);
                    applet.repaint();
private static void createAndShowGUI() {
PieChartExample2 f = new PieChartExample2();
f.pack();
f.setSize(new Dimension(CHART_WIDTH ,CHART_HEIGHT));
f.show();
public static void main(String[] args) {
//Schedule a job for the event-dispatching thread:
//creating and showing this application's GUI.
javax.swing.SwingUtilities.invokeLater(new Runnable() {
public void run() {
createAndShowGUI();
}

Answer 1

Ok. It seems I may be wrong and that this may not be a concurrent call issue. I overode the components setBounds and setLocation methods and it appears that an external class is updating the position of these components while layoutContainer is attempting to position them. I can see that the correct positions are being set in the setBounds method, but this is happening after layoutContainer has called getLocation on the components. To be a little more specific, I am using a JLayeredPane to display some overlapping JLabels with images. I have implemented drag and drop on these labels so that dropping one on another swaps the images. The label positions and sizes are not being changed during the drop (I don't want them to move or resize just change images). However, for some reason I have yet to discover, two calls to set bounds are being made on the labels. The first call is relocating the label to the second labels position, the second call is relocating the label back to it's original position. If anyone has any insight on why the label position are changing when I am not explicitly repositioning them please reply. I will post another reply when I have corrected the problem or found a work around for it. I am awarding the dukes to tjacobs1 since he was the only responses I've had so far.