Thread: JTextPane questions.

I am working on building a text editor using a jtext pane, and I have run into some problems. I am fairly inexperienced when it comes to using jtextpanes, and I have read the tutorials on them, sadly, the tutorials don't exactly cover what I want and I am at a loss.

To start, I would like to point out that I made a post on Java-forums.com, which has went about a week without a response and fell off the interesting pages, here is the link
Understanding Text pane use - Java Forums

Rather than being annoying there and bumping it repeatedly, I have decided to come here looking for help.

My problem is updating the fonts and font sizes, and I am becoming quite frustrated with my attempts, and I'm beginning to lose interest. Having know idea really how to start can get quite frustrating. I seem to have gotten the caretListener which updates the carets font working. The problem is that it has a delay. After I make a change(change font, select bold, etc) it takes 1 button press before it updates. I am wondering, how can I force this update to occur immediately?

Here is the code I have for the caretListener

CaretListener cl = new CaretListener(){
		public void caretUpdate(CaretEvent e){
			MutableAttributeSet att = text.getInputAttributes();
			int size = 12;
			try{
				size = Integer.parseInt(sizeChoices.getSelectedItem().toString());
			} catch(NumberFormatException nfe){
				size = 12;
				sizeChoices.setSelectedIndex(2);
			}
 
			if(e.getDot() == e.getMark()){
				startSelect = -1;
				endSelect = -1;
			}
			else if(e.getDot() > e.getMark()){
				startSelect = e.getMark();
				endSelect = e.getDot();
			}
			if(boldToggle.isSelected()){
				StyleConstants.setBold(att, true);
				StyleConstants.setFontSize(att, size);
				StyleConstants.setFontFamily(att, fontChoices.getSelectedItem().toString());
			}
			else{
				StyleConstants.setBold(att, false);
				StyleConstants.setFontSize(att, size);
				StyleConstants.setFontFamily(att, fontChoices.getSelectedItem().toString());
			}
			if(italicToggle.isSelected()){
				StyleConstants.setItalic(att, true);
				StyleConstants.setFontSize(att, size);
				StyleConstants.setFontFamily(att, fontChoices.getSelectedItem().toString());
			}
			else{
				StyleConstants.setItalic(att, false);
				StyleConstants.setFontSize(att, size);
				StyleConstants.setFontFamily(att, fontChoices.getSelectedItem().toString());
			}
			text.grabFocus();
		}
	};

The part with the getMark and getDot was my attempt to remedy my next problem.

How can I change the font of selected text? I thought that I could declare two int variables for the class to use when text is selected but it's not working as I would like. I tried creating a document listener to accomplish this but I don't believe it's anywhere near correct, here is the code for it.

DocumentListener dl = new DocumentListener(){
		public void insertUpdate(DocumentEvent e){
			//don't need this listener to do anything
		}
		public void removeUpdate(DocumentEvent e){
			//don't need this listener to do anything
		}
		public void changedUpdate(DocumentEvent e){
			MutableAttributeSet att = text.getInputAttributes();
			int size;
			if((startSelect <= 0) && (endSelect <= 0)){
				//don't do anything
			}
			else if(startSelect < endSelect){
				if(boldToggle.isSelected()){
					StyleConstants.setBold(att, true);
				}
				else{
					StyleConstants.setBold(att, false);
				}
				if(italicToggle.isSelected()){
					StyleConstants.setItalic(att, true);
				}
				else{
					StyleConstants.setItalic(att, false);
				}
				try{
					size = Integer.parseInt(sizeChoices.getSelectedItem().toString());
				} catch(NumberFormatException nfe){
					size = 12;
					sizeChoices.setSelectedIndex(2);
				}
				StyleConstants.setFontSize(att, size);
				StyleConstants.setFontFamily(att, fontChoices.getSelectedItem().toString());
			}
		}
	};

please give me a hand in helping me understand this. I have found nothing that really covers these topics, and I am at a loss for how to do this.

I am editing my post because I figured a lot of the problems out. I am now using an action which finds the selected values of 2 toggle buttons and 2 combo boxes and when they are clicked, it sets the selected text to that character attribute.

My two remaining problems are the following:

1.) Forcing the caret listener to immediately update font changes and not take typing one character before updating.

2.) Querying an attribute set. I want to be able to look at a selected text area,and find out the attributes of that area, size, font name, bold or italics, and use this to set the buttons and the combo boxes.