Java Swing Tutorial - Java Swing Text Components

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We can categorize the text components based on two criteria:

• number of lines in text
• type of text they can handle.

Based on the number of lines of text that a text component can handle, we can further categorize them as follows:

• Single-line text component
• Multiline text component

A single line text component can handle one line of text. JTextField, JPasswordField, and JFormattedTextField are single-line text components.

A multiline text component can handle multiple lines of text. JTextArea, JEditorPane, and JTextPane classes are multiline text components.

Based on the type of the text that a text component can handle, we can categorize text components as follows:

• Plain text component
• Styled text component

Plain text has no format while the styled text can have format, such as bold, italic, underlined, etc., font, and color.

A plain text means that the entire text contained in the text component is displayed using only one style.

JTextField, JPasswordField, JFormattedTextField, and JTextArea are plain text components. JEditorPane and JTextPane are styled components.

JTextComponent

JTextComponent is an abstract class and it is the ancestor of all Swing text components. It includes common functionalities that are available to all text components.

The following table lists some commonly used methods of text components that are included in the JTextComponent class.

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