Question

I am making a simple chat application and I am trying to find out which text component is more appropriate to use.The component will need to support coloured text , provide line wrap and support scroll pane. Also it must allow the user to choose the font thats going to be used ( size , style etc ).

Which is the best option for this ? Thanks .

Answer 1

The JTextArea can do all those things and you might look into the Document interface since this is a chat app. The Document will give you the ability to sync two components like JTextField and JTextArea. Document is not a text field of any kind, but is to be used with one. JTextField has a constructor method for Document “JTextField(Document doc)”. To set the color of you text just call the setForeground(Color) method of JTextArea, also this method is inherited from its parent component JComponent.

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

public class Example {

    JFrame frameA = new JFrame("Example");
    JTextArea textA = new JTextArea();

    public Example() {
        frameA.setSize(600, 300);
        frameA.setDefaultCloseOperation(JFrame.EXIT_ON_CLOSE);
        Container content = frameA.getContentPane(); // Set the Color of textA.
        textA.setForeground(Color.red);
        content.add(textA);
        frameA.setVisible(true);
    }

    public static void main(String[] args) {
        Example exam = new Example();
    }
}