Module java.desktop
Package javax.swing.plaf.basic

Class BasicTextUI

java.lang.Object
javax.swing.plaf.ComponentUI
javax.swing.plaf.TextUI
javax.swing.plaf.basic.BasicTextUI
All Implemented Interfaces:
ViewFactory
Direct Known Subclasses:
BasicEditorPaneUI, BasicTextAreaUI, BasicTextFieldUI, DefaultTextUI
public abstract class BasicTextUI extends TextUI implements ViewFactory

Basis of a text components look-and-feel. This provides the basic editor view and controller services that may be useful when creating a look-and-feel for an extension of JTextComponent.

Most state is held in the associated JTextComponent as bound properties, and the UI installs default values for the various properties. This default will install something for all of the properties. Typically, a LAF implementation will do more however. At a minimum, a LAF would generally install key bindings.

This class also provides some concurrency support if the Document associated with the JTextComponent is a subclass of AbstractDocument. Access to the View (or View hierarchy) is serialized between any thread mutating the model and the Swing event thread (which is expected to render, do model/view coordinate translation, etc). Any access to the root view should first acquire a read-lock on the AbstractDocument and release that lock in a finally block.

An important method to define is the getPropertyPrefix() method which is used as the basis of the keys used to fetch defaults from the UIManager. The string should reflect the type of TextUI (eg. TextField, TextArea, etc) without the particular LAF part of the name (eg Metal, Motif, etc).

To build a view of the model, one of the following strategies can be employed.

  1. One strategy is to simply redefine the ViewFactory interface in the UI. By default, this UI itself acts as the factory for View implementations. This is useful for simple factories. To do this reimplement the create(javax.swing.text.Element) method.
  2. A common strategy for creating more complex types of documents is to have the EditorKit implementation return a factory. Since the EditorKit ties all of the pieces necessary to maintain a type of document, the factory is typically an important part of that and should be produced by the EditorKit implementation.

Warning: Serialized objects of this class will not be compatible with future Swing releases. The current serialization support is appropriate for short term storage or RMI between applications running the same version of Swing. As of 1.4, support for long term storage of all JavaBeans has been added to the java.beans package. Please see XMLEncoder.