Question

I am creating a simple text editor similiar to Notepad.
It would insert the time and date to the file if the user presses F5.
I browsed about mnemonics and accelerators but they are used in combination with Alt and Ctrl respectively.

Should I use an EventListener or is there any other solution?

Answer 1

You could simply use:

JMenuItem menuItem = new JMenuItem("Refresh");
KeyStroke f5 = KeyStroke.getKeyStroke(KeyEvent.VK_F5, 0);
menuItem.setAccelerator(f5);

with KeyStroke having 0 specifying no modifiers as described in the docs.

An ActionListener is the appropriate listener for menu item events.