I've found several pages and SO answers about the enter-as-tab problem in Java, but all propose either overriding methods of JTextField or adding a key listener to every component.
But isn't there any other way? Can't I override something of the LookAndFeel or install some global policy?
After some documentation crawling I found a solution: It is possible to set the focus traversal keys on KeyboardFocusManager instead of a JComponent instance.
// 1. Get default keys
Set<AWTKeyStroke> ftk = new HashSet<AWTKeyStroke>(
KeyboardFocusManager.getCurrentKeyboardFocusManager()
.getDefaultFocusTraversalKeys(
KeyboardFocusManager.FORWARD_TRAVERSAL_KEYS));
// 2. Add our key
ftk.add(KeyStroke.getKeyStroke("ENTER"));
// 3. Set new keys
KeyboardFocusManager.getCurrentKeyboardFocusManager()
.setDefaultFocusTraversalKeys(
KeyboardFocusManager.FORWARD_TRAVERSAL_KEYS, ftk);
This adds the enter key to the list of keys which are used for forward traversal. (Backward traversal similar)
you can probably use http://java.sun.com/products/jfc/tsc/special_report/kestrel/keybindings.html
to change the keyBinding for the enter key
or you can add focustravesal keys
setFocusTraversalKeys(KeyboardFocusManager.FORWARD_TRAVERSAL_KEYS, your keys here);
The hammer - of setting the enter as focus traversal key for all component except those which register their own - is just fine if it's really required. The obvious drawback is that default bindings to the enter stop working, in particular
If those side-effects are problematic, there's the less intrusive alternative of tweaking the binding in the shared ancestor actionMap of the textFields.
// "early" in the app instantiate a textField
JTextField text = new JTextField();
ActionMap map = text.getActionMap();
// get a reference to the default binding
final Action notify = map.get(JTextField.notifyAction);
while (map.getParent() != null) {
// walk up the parent chain to reach the top-most shared ancestor
map = map.getParent();
}
// custom notify action
TextAction tab = new TextAction(JTextField.notifyAction) {
@Override
public void actionPerformed(ActionEvent e) {
// delegate to default if enabled
if (notify.isEnabled()) {
notify.actionPerformed(e);
}
// trigger a focus transfer
getTextComponent(e).transferFocus();
}
};
// replace default with augmented custom action
map.put(JTextField.notifyAction, tab);
After replacing the default, all textFields will use the custom action. The one beware is that the replacement has to be repeated whenever the LAF is changed.
