Colored text in a JTextArea?

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Inertia_sublimation - 16 May 2004 21:38 GMT

Hello everyone!

I'm wondering where Swing provides the facility to color text in a text area. I
saw something about RTF in the docs, but Im not too familiar with either RTF or
how/where Swing parses it to color the text.

I would greatly appreciate an explanation of how to do something like this.

Thanks in advance!

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Joe Vasher - 16 May 2004 21:47 GMT

> Hello everyone!
>
[quoted text clipped - 5 lines]
>
> Thanks in advance!

I think you can use

JTextArea textArea = new JTextArea();

textArea.setForgroundColor( Color.RED );

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Andrew Thompson - 16 May 2004 21:51 GMT

> I'm wondering where Swing provides the facility to color text in a text area.

No. Well ..yes maybe if you fiddled with
its default font, but it is not really designed
for styled text.

>...I saw something about RTF in the docs,
> but Im not too familiar with either RTF or
> how/where Swing parses it to color the text.

For RTF/HTML etc. you can use a JEDitorPane
<http://www.physci.org/api.jsp?class=javax.swing.JEditorPane>
[ Ignore the first link and go to the JavaDocs.. ]

Here is a little example of rendering HTML using JEditorPane.
<http://www.physci.org/launcher.jsp?class=/codes/HTMLOP/JAddPane>

Well.. there are no colors used, but if you
can get colored text in HTML, you can then do
that in a Swing component and it will render
as HTML.

HTH

Signature

Andrew Thompson
http://www.PhySci.org/ Open-source software suite
http://www.PhySci.org/codes/ Web & IT Help
http://www.1point1C.org/ Science & Technology

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Fahd Shariff - 17 May 2004 10:14 GMT

A JTextPane would be more suitable. A jtextpane has a styled
document and using this, along with StyleConstants and an
AttributeSet, you can apply any style to your text. (Check out the
javadocs for the above classes)

A simple example that i hacked together is shown below:

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

public class MyProgram extends JFrame
{
    JTextPane editor ;

    public MyProgram()
    {
        super() ;
        editor = new JTextPane() ;
        getContentPane().add(editor,BorderLayout.CENTER) ;
        setVisible(true) ;
        try{
            writeSomeText() ;
        }catch(Exception e){e.printStackTrace() ;}

    }

    //write some multicolored text
    public void writeSomeText() throws Exception
    {
        MutableAttributeSet attr = new SimpleAttributeSet();
        StyledDocument doc = editor.getStyledDocument();

        //write some text in red
        StyleConstants.setForeground(attr, Color.red);
        int offset = doc.getLength();
        doc.insertString(offset, "HELLO ", attr) ;

        //bold text with yellow bg, blue fg
        StyleConstants.setForeground(attr, Color.blue);
        StyleConstants.setBackground(attr, Color.yellow);
        StyleConstants.setBold(attr,true);
        offset = doc.getLength();
        doc.insertString(offset, "World! ", attr) ;
    }

    public static void main(String[] args)
    {
        new MyProgram() ;
    }
}

Fahd Shariff
http://www.fahdshariff.cjb.net
"Let the code do the talking..."

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Fahd Shariff - 17 May 2004 10:18 GMT

You can use a JTextPane to add color to text. A jtextpane has a styled
document and using this, along with StyleConstants and an
AttributeSet, you can apply any style to your text. (Check out the
javadocs for the above classes)

A simple example that i hacked together is shown below:

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

public class MyProgram extends JFrame
{
    JTextPane editor ;

    public MyProgram()
    {
        super() ;
        editor = new JTextPane() ;
        getContentPane().add(editor,BorderLayout.CENTER) ;
        setVisible(true) ;
        try{
            writeSomeText() ;
        }catch(Exception e){e.printStackTrace() ;}

    }

    //write some multicolored text
    public void writeSomeText() throws Exception
    {
        MutableAttributeSet attr = new SimpleAttributeSet();
        StyledDocument doc = editor.getStyledDocument();

        //write some text in red
        StyleConstants.setForeground(attr, Color.red);
        int offset = doc.getLength();
        doc.insertString(offset, "HELLO ", attr) ;

        //bold text with yellow bg, blue fg
        StyleConstants.setForeground(attr, Color.blue);
        StyleConstants.setBackground(attr, Color.yellow);
        StyleConstants.setBold(attr,true);
        offset = doc.getLength();
        doc.insertString(offset, "World! ", attr) ;
    }

    public static void main(String[] args)
    {
        new MyProgram() ;
    }
}

Fahd Shariff
http://www.fahdshariff.cjb.net
"Let the code do the talking..."

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Colored text in a JTextArea?

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