Why is Toolkit.synch() useful for animation? When should I use it?

Many of the windowing systems (e.g. Xlib of X windows) buffer the requests relating to graphics. Toolkit.sync() is supposed to flush all the buffered requests for actual processing. You can easily see why this will be applicable in the case of animation.

I have used it sometimes to make the component.setCursor(...) actually take effect. I think though that it is only useful in X widnows environment. I am not sure about MS windows.