Thanks for your response.  Please see my reply to Michael.

Michael:

Thanks for your code sample.  I liked your approach but I need to be
able to only have one component with the capability.  I started with
your code and below is what I came up with.  It works and it works with
the special document that I have to have in addition.  Any suggestions
for improvement or simplification would be greatly appreceiated.

There are a couple of issues with this approach.  It does not correctly
handle KEY_PRESSED events that also generate KEY_TYPED events (two
characters will be output).  I don't really understand how to consume
the KeyEvent, just putting in keyEvent.consume() doesn't do it.  If I
consume the KeyEvent and return true from dispatchKeyEvent() it eats up
all characters except the F keys (I really don't know what is going on
there).  I am concerned that I don't understand the whole
KeyboardFocusManager thing enough to know for sure that I will always
have the correct current KeyboardFocusManager and that my events will
then get processed.

import java.awt.*;
import java.awt.event.*;
import java.util.*;
import javax.swing.*;
import javax.swing.text.*;

public class MyKeyEventDispatcher implements KeyEventDispatcher {
    public HashSet<Component> comps = new HashSet<Component>();
    public HashMap<Integer,Character> swaps = new
HashMap<Integer,Character>();

    public boolean dispatchKeyEvent(KeyEvent keyEvent) {
        Component comp = keyEvent.getComponent();
        if (comps.contains(comp) && keyEvent.getID() ==
KeyEvent.KEY_PRESSED) {
            Set<Integer> swapSet = swaps.keySet();
            Iterator<Integer> it = swapSet.iterator();
            while (it.hasNext()) {
                Integer keyCode = it.next();
                if (keyCode.intValue() == keyEvent.getKeyCode()) {
                    KeyEvent ev = new KeyEvent(comp,KeyEvent.KEY_TYPED,
                     System.currentTimeMillis(),0,KeyEvent.VK_UNDEFINED,
                     swaps.get(keyCode).charValue());
                    KeyboardFocusManager.getCurrentKeyboardFocusManager().
                     redispatchEvent(comp,ev);
                }
            }
        }
        return false;
    }

    public static void main(String[] args) {
        Runnable r = new Runnable() {
            public void run() {
                JFrame f = new JFrame();
                f.setDefaultCloseOperation(JFrame.EXIT_ON_CLOSE);
                JTextField tf = new JTextField();
                f.add(tf,BorderLayout.NORTH);
                JTextField tf2 = new JTextField();
                f.add(tf2,BorderLayout.SOUTH);

                MyKeyEventDispatcher med = new MyKeyEventDispatcher();
                med.swaps.put(
                 new Integer(KeyEvent.VK_F4),new Character('\u00bd'));
                med.comps.add(tf);

                KeyboardFocusManager kbfm =
                 KeyboardFocusManager.getCurrentKeyboardFocusManager();
                kbfm.addKeyEventDispatcher(med);

                f.pack();
                f.setVisible(true);
            }
        };
        EventQueue.invokeLater(r);
    }
}