There are a number of reasons for which you might want to produce a picture from an MDC Text. For instance, you might use JSesh as a library in a web application.

Of course, you need to have both jsesh.jar and jseshGlyphs.jar in your classpath. Currently (JSesh 2.13.7) you also need jvectClipboard-1.0.jar, but this is a dependency I will remove in a short while (you will need jvectClipboard-1.0.jar if you want to produce SVG, WMF or the like, of course). Then the following Java code will do:

    public static BufferedImage buildImage(String mdcText) throws MDCSyntaxError {
            // Create the drawing system:                
            MDCDrawingFacade drawing = new MDCDrawingFacade();
           // Create the picture 
           BufferedImage result = drawing.createImage(mdcText);
           return result
}

That's all. Once you have a BufferedImage, it can be displayed on the screen, or written in JPEG or PNG using ImageIO :

Optionnally, it's possible to customize the rendering. Here is a complete ready-to run example:

 /**
 * How to use JSesh to create bitmaps in Java.
 * compile: javac -cp .:/FOLDER_CONTAINING/jsesh.jar TestJSeshBitmap.java
 * run: java -cp .:/FOLDER_CONTAINING/jsesh.jar TestJSeshBitmap
 * 
 * jseshGlyphs.jar and jvectClipboard-1.0.jar should be in the same folder as jsesh.jar.
 * (normally, there is no need to add them explicitely to the class path , as jsesh.jar contains the necessary 
 * information in its manifest.
 */

import  javax.imageio.ImageIO;
import java.io.*;
import java.awt.image.* ;
import jsesh.mdcDisplayer.preferences.*;
import jsesh.mdcDisplayer.draw.*;
import jsesh.mdc.*;

public class Test {
    public static BufferedImage buildImage(String mdcText) throws MDCSyntaxError {
        // Create the drawing system:                
        MDCDrawingFacade drawing = new MDCDrawingFacade();
        // Change the scale, choosing the cadrat height in pixels.
        drawing.setCadratHeight(60);
        // Change a number of parameters 
        DrawingSpecification drawingSpecifications = new DrawingSpecificationsImplementation();
        PageLayout pageLayout= new PageLayout();
        pageLayout.setLeftMargin(5);
        pageLayout.setTopMargin(5);
        drawingSpecifications.setPageLayout(pageLayout);
        drawing.setDrawingSpecifications(drawingSpecifications);
        // Create the picture 
       BufferedImage result = drawing.createImage(mdcText);
       return result;
    }

public static void main(String args[]) throws MDCSyntaxError, IOException {
              // Create the picture
              BufferedImage img= buildImage("i-w-r:a-C1-m-p*t:pt");
              File f = new File("example.png");
              // save it in png (better than jpeg in this case)
              ImageIO.write(img, "png", f);
  }
}

The size of the signs is controlled using ‘drawing.setCadratHeight();‘.

(note to self: it should be easier to change the size of everything using drawingSpecification !!!)