Conventions Used in This Book

The font conventions used in this book are quite simple.

Italic is used for:

• UNIX pathnames, filenames, and program names

• Internet addresses, such as domain names and URLs

• New terms where they are defined

Boldface is used for:

• Names of GUI buttons and menus

Typewriter Font is used for:

• Anything that might appear in a Java program, including method names, variable names, and class names

• Command lines and options that should be typed verbatim on the screen

• Tags that might appear in an HTML document

In the main body of text, we always use a pair of empty parentheses after a method name to distinguish methods from variables and other creatures.

In the Java source listings, we follow the coding conventions most frequently used in the Java community. Class names begin with capital letters; variable and method names begin with lowercase. All the letters in the names of constants are capitalized. We don't use underscores to separate words in a long name; following common practice, we capitalize individual words (after the first) and run the words together. For example: thisIsAVariable, thisIsAMethod(), ThisIsAClass, and THISISACONSTANT.