Copying Elements doesn't help much, because there is no general way to
insert an Element. HTMLDocument has something, but the StyledDocument
interface doesn't require such a method. As an extra "bonus" some
Element implementations in the package aren't public, so you can't
construct them manually for some data.

If I have understood the whole mess correctly (and it is a long time ago
since I looked at it in detail), then Elements are automatically created
and inserted when you add characters with attributes to a document. So
you don't need the elements, you need the attributes.

E.g. (not checked, will not compile):

    class Segment {
        String text;
        AttributeSet attr;
    };

    int start = ... // Text start pos/offset in document
    int len = ... // length of text segment
    ArrayList segments = new ArrayList();
    DefaultStyledDocument d = ...;

    int pos = start;
    while(pos < (start + len)) {
        Segment s = new Segment();
        Element e = getCharacterElement(pos);
        pos = e.getEndOffset();
        s.text = // copy substring out of document
        s.attr = e.getAttributes();
        segments.add(s);
    }
   

If I remember correctly, StyledEditorKit doesn't implement the
read/write methods in a useful way. You just get the text portion out of
that class and lose all style information :-(. Subclasses might have
working implementations.

/Thomas