Question

This is the beginning of the MidiSynth class from the Java Sound Demo. I was under the impression that methods in Java were always called from an object or a class. Where does the setLayout() method come from here?

public class MidiSynth extends JPanel implements ControlContext {
    // Fields omitted

    public MidiSynth() {
        setLayout(new BorderLayout());

        JPanel p = new JPanel();
        p.setLayout(new BoxLayout(p, BoxLayout.Y_AXIS));
        EmptyBorder eb = new EmptyBorder(5,5,5,5);
        BevelBorder bb = new BevelBorder(BevelBorder.LOWERED);
        CompoundBorder cb = new CompoundBorder(eb,bb);
        p.setBorder(new CompoundBorder(cb,eb));
        JPanel pp = new JPanel(new BorderLayout());
        pp.setBorder(new EmptyBorder(10,20,10,5));
        pp.add(piano = new Piano());
        p.add(pp);
        p.add(controls = new Controls());
        p.add(new InstrumentsTable());

        add(p);
    }

Answer 1

MidiSynth extends JPanel

So the setLayout call is actually invoking this.setLayout