Question

My application’s main frame starts a JFrame thread:

IBM1622GUI cardReadPunchGUI = new IBM1622GUI(); // instantiate
Thread cardReadPunchThread = new Thread(cardReadPunchGUI); // alloc thread
cardReadPunchThread.start(); // call thread's run() method

Later, the main frame needs to “destroy” IBM1622GUI (as part of “taking a peripheral offline”), and still later, to reinstantiate it – presumably using the same procedure as above. What should the main frame do to basically return to the state prior to when the IBM1622GUI was first instantiated?

EDIT – I should probably mention that IBM1622GUI, the JFrame class, is being developed with NetBeans as a “Swing GUI Form”, and thus there are certain limitations on what edits I can make to the source code.

Answer 1

Read this

You should use this style to init a JFrame.

IBM1622GUI cardReadPunchGUI = null;
SwingUtilities.invokeLater(new Runnable() {
    public void run() {
        cardReadPunchGUI = new IBM1622GUI();
    }
});

When you want to close the JFrame, here is already the question with answers

(Edit by Chap: the linked SO thread is very long and meandering, but it boils down to simply using cardReadPunchGUI.dispose(). This does, in fact, answer my question satisfactorily, and I’d like to give credit for this answer but I would also like for this note to be included.)