Table Rendering

Java > Core SWING advanced programming > 3. TEXT COMPONENTS WITH CUSTOM VIEWS

Chapter 3. TEXT COMPONENTS WITH CUSTOM VIEWS

Topics in this Chapter

• The Element Hierarchy

• Document Views

• View Factories

• Tab Handling

• Creating Customized Views

• Custom Highlighters

• Using Customized Views to Build Clever Input Fields

In the first two chapters of this book, you've seen how the document content is stored in the model associated with a text component and how it is possible to store attributes that determine how the text is rendered on the screen. In this chapter, you'll see that the attributes that were discussed in Chapter 2, which exist at both the character and paragraph level, are actually stored in a hierarchy of "elements" that map out the various structures within the document. Once we've described the element structure, we'll move on to look at the last major piece of the Swing text component architecture the collection of View classes that use the information stored in the content model, the element structure, and the attributes to determine how the text should actually appear on the screen. In the second part of this chapter, we'll show you several techniques for creating enhanced text components by implementing custom Views, including a powerful text component that allows you to specify how its content should be rendered using a separately supplied formatting string.