Question

I’m writing a syntax highlighting text editor in Java and I’ve run into a bit of a problem as to what I should do as opposed to what I want to do. Basically the KeyEvent class provides me with a bit of a problem:

1. KeyTyped does not allow me to ID
   what the key is so it is useless for
   lexing.
2. KeyPressed is better, it allows me
   to ID each key as it is pressed
   which is great for lexing, however
   it triggers the event before the key
   is actually put into the
   JEditorPane.
3. KeyReleased solves the problem of
   both KeyPressed & KeyTyped as it
   occurs after the character has been
   input and it allows me to actually
   ID what the character is. However if
   I hold ‘a’ and it puts in 50 ‘a’s,
   I’m screwed.

My solution to the issue is to use KeyPressed for all characters that are to be input, consume the event, read the character that was supposed to be input and manually input it, however I’m guessing this isn’t the most elegant solution available. My question is how else could I go about this? Is there something I’m just glazing over or did I find the solution to my problem and should just roll with it?

Answer 1

You should probably be using a Document Listener.