Understanding the use of Elements in Java Swing

Question

I'm working on a project that requires having low level control over text that will be displayed in a JTextArea. In my search to understand how this can be achieved I came across Elements. Is there any way using custom Elements that I could get access to the individual words typed into a document? If so, how would I structure these elements?

Yes. However, I am not interested in reading the entire text every time it is modified and running a regex over it. Rather, I am wondering if it is possible to get what are effectively 'hooks' to the words in the text. That way I could access and modify these words without having a parse the entire body of text. — Chris Grimm, Apr 11 '13 at 04:14
That isn't what I'm looking for. getText offers up a copy of the entire text contained in the textArea. I'd like to have hooks to individual words without having ever get the entire document's text. — Chris Grimm, Apr 11 '13 at 05:13

score 2 · Answer 1 · edited May 23 '17 at 10:25

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An instance of javax.swing.text.Element represents a part of a structured Document, the model used by JTextComponent. Elements are not necessarily individual words; they are typically parts of a document that share some common attribute(s). You can see how to traverse the elements of a document in examples shown here and here. See also How to Use Editor Panes and Text Panes.

edited May 23 '17 at 10:25

Community

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answered Apr 11 '13 at 05:14

trashgod

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score 2 · Accepted Answer · answered Apr 11 '13 at 05:45

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I'd like to have hooks to individual words

Maybe Document.createPosition()

answered Apr 11 '13 at 05:45

camickr

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This is what I ended up using as a hacky solution. Thanks! – Chris Grimm Apr 11 '13 at 07:22

Understanding the use of Elements in Java Swing

2 Answers2