Question

The word wrapping method provided for JTextArea is not working in my program. Why isn’t it working? How can I fix it? Here is the code:

    text= new JTextArea(15,65);

    text.setWrapStyleWord(true); // word wrapping enabled

    text.setPreferredSize(new Dimension(getPreferredSize()));

Here is the screenshot. The last word goes out of frame.

Answer 1

The following SSCCE let you experiment with both settings. Here you can see that using setWrapStyleWord has no effect if you do not call setLineWrap first. This is also documented in the javadoc of setWrapStyleWord.

The best results for a readable form is setting them both to true.

import javax.swing.JCheckBox;
import javax.swing.JFrame;
import javax.swing.JScrollPane;
import javax.swing.JTextArea;
import javax.swing.WindowConstants;
import java.awt.BorderLayout;
import java.awt.EventQueue;
import java.awt.event.ItemEvent;
import java.awt.event.ItemListener;

public class TextAreaDemo {

  public static void main( String[] args ) {
    EventQueue.invokeLater( new Runnable() {
      @Override
      public void run() {
        JFrame testFrame = new JFrame( "TestFrame" );

        final JTextArea textArea = new JTextArea( 15, 65 );
        testFrame.add( new JScrollPane( textArea ) );

        final JCheckBox wordWrap = new JCheckBox( "word wrap" );
        wordWrap.setSelected( textArea.getWrapStyleWord() );
        wordWrap.addItemListener( new ItemListener() {
          @Override
          public void itemStateChanged( ItemEvent e ) {
            textArea.setWrapStyleWord( wordWrap.isSelected() );
          }
        } );
        testFrame.add( wordWrap, BorderLayout.NORTH );
        final JCheckBox lineWrap = new JCheckBox( "line wrap" );
        lineWrap.setSelected( textArea.getLineWrap() );
        lineWrap.addItemListener( new ItemListener() {
          @Override
          public void itemStateChanged( ItemEvent e ) {
            textArea.setLineWrap( lineWrap.isSelected() );
          }
        } );
        testFrame.add( lineWrap, BorderLayout.SOUTH );

        testFrame.pack();
        testFrame.setDefaultCloseOperation( WindowConstants.DISPOSE_ON_CLOSE );
        testFrame.setVisible( true );
      }
    } );

  }
}