Develop Reference

JEditorpane vs. JTextPane

i have to create a project in java swing for my college. An editor of java files with proper text highlighting i.e different colors and fonts for java keywords, java comments and for normal text.
Help me to select one of two styled text component JEditorpane and JTextPane provided by java so that i can full-fill the requirements.
Please tell me suitable difference between these two that in which kind of situation i have to use one of these.

Although both support rich text. But there is difference.
JEditorPane supports display/editing of HTML.
JTextPane is an extension of JEditorPane which provides word processing features like fonts, text styles, colors, etc.

You can use either of them, but if it is a rich text editor then I would suggest using the JTextPane.
You may also find this topic useful.

How can I print a RTF formatted String to a JLabel?

I have my custom JComponent which do a lot of drawing operations.
They also include drawStrings for text paragraphs, but now Id like to format the text (in a seperate window with jtextpane or another RTF editor) (bold, font-size, align, font-color, lists) and show this formatted text in my own component.
Id like to do that without bufferedimages because if i have a big jcomponent full with images I would get a overflow error (RAM)
Something like with AttributedString could work, but how?
I don't really know how to get the RTF-Text out of the Jtextpane (or if there is a better editor plz tell me) and draw it in the "paintComponent(Graphics g)" method.
The Editor is just used to format the text easily, not for the presentation (which is done with my own component)
Can anyone help me please?
Thanks for your help,
so i create an AttributeString and then apply the RTF-formattings in it?
do you know how I can extrude the RTF information to an adequate AttributedString? e.g. a function which transforms the formatted text to an AttributedString like
public AttributedString getAttrString(String plainRTF){
...
}
Thanks a lot

Try this custom AdvancedRTFEditorKit
http://java-sl.com/advanced_rtf_editor_kit.html

You can parse the structure of the underlying Document to get to the actual elements. Each Element has a set of attributes you can access with getAttributes().
You can build AttributedString using document.getText() and applying corresponding styles using AttributedString.addAttribute() method.
Then draw the string on Graphics. Check out this tutorial that uses TextLayout to render the AttributedString.
Take a look at styledDocumentToAttributedString() method here. It may be already implements what you need; it depends on the complexity of your string. Also, this discussion may be useful.

Code/text folding in SWING

I'm looking for a way to provide 'text folding' capabilities to a swing JTextArea or JTextPane
More specifically, I want to add a block of data in a text component and I want the component to display only some header line. Then the user can unfold the block by clicking some icon. This is just like the code folding feature in most IDE.
I've found ->some sample code<- after some thorough search, but the mechanisms used here are quite obscure to me and it stops working when I try to remove text from the document.
Maybe using XML as input could be a lead ?

This one how to add collapsible area
http://java-sl.com/collapse_area.html
This one how to represent XML
http://java-sl.com/xml_editor_kit.html

I would start by looking at the NetBeans API: http://bits.netbeans.org/dev/javadoc/org-netbeans-modules-editor-fold/overview-summary.html
If you were to do it yourself, you'd need to provide a Document implementation that makes the JTextComponent think that pieces are being added or removed, then attach click events that tell the document to update itself. A lot of work.
Visually, it may also be better to use JEditorPane, but that's probably more work.

Replacing smiles with images in Swing text area

I am designing a chat system..i am making use of JText area to display chat, and JTextField to enter text.
My question is how to recognize smiley's like ":)" and replace it by corresponding image
on text area? i found no method which will append image on text area..Please help.

http://java-sl.com/tip_autoreplace_smiles.html

You'll have to use a read-only JEditorPane to display HTML instead of a JTextArea in that case.

JTextArea was made to display only multiple rows of text, but correct me if I'm wrong. To display Images you could use the JEditorPane control that will allow you to use html, with simple <img /> tags which will point to a image.
Regarding how to recognize smileys you could create a file / list of common patterns that you would like to support and then simple check if the text contains the pattern with the .contains , or even Regular Expressions.
Update
And with the JEditorPane you will also be to do addition things like say scan for emails or links and automatically convert them so the user can click them, always a nice feature to have.

Formatting text with HTML in a JEditorPane?

I am trying to make a simple email client in Java Swing.
I want to allow users to format their email in any way they want, like making some parts of the text bold, other parts italic, etc. In other words, I am trying to make a WYSIWYG editor. The formatting is done in HTML. I am using JEditorPane to display the text.
I have tried adding tags myself to the text directly by using setText and getText methods of JEditorPane. I could make it work for basic formatting, but it is quite difficult to handle complex formatting. (trying to remove tags from multi-tagged elements, for example)
Is there an easier way to accomplish this? I have looked at HTMLEditorKit but it seems like it does not support adding tags to and/or replacing a specific string.
Thanks in advance.

The HTMLEditorKit comes with some default Actions that allow you to do some basic styling of the text with the click of a menu item (or button). Take a look at the example in the section from the Swing tutorial on Text Component Features.