The transformations allow to map the positions from one co-ordinate system to another. It can be used for drawing a shape into a magnified/reduced, rotated, shifted, mirrored 2D space. It is easier to transform the 2D space coordinates than recalculating the coordinates of all objects. All position transformations are defined by 6 variables
a, b, c, d, e, f (out of 9) of the 2D space transformation matrix. The default value of non-transformed 2D space is
1, 0, 0, 1, 0, 0 (so-called unit matrix). The transformation matrix is a part of the drawing area. The
save and
restore methods can save this matrix.
The transformation methods
transform,
translate,
scale or
rotate modify some (or all) values of the transformation matrix.
Each method saves the current state of the transformation matrix and then applies the modification(s). It means that these modifications are cumulative.
By contrast, the
setTransform transformation method
first sets the currently valid transformation matrix to the default value and then executes the transform transformation. This makes it the only transformation method that allows reset all cumulated transformations and set new transformation that is not cumulated.
This method is also functional in
Web panels.