Creating a Simple Plain Text Editor Pane

Java Swing Tutorials - Herong's Tutorial Examples - Version 4.11, by Dr. Herong Yang

Java Swing Tutorials - Herong's Tutorial Examples

∟Creating a Simple Plain Text Editor Pane

This section provides a tutorial example on how to create a simple plain text editor pane with a call of setText() to set initial text content.

javax.swing.JEditorPane class can be used to create a simple text editor window with two method calls:

setContentType("text/plain") - Setting the content type to be plain text.
setText(text) - Setting the initial text content.

Here is an example program I wrote to test the JEditorPane class:

/* JEditorPaneTest.java
 * Copyright (c) 2014, HerongYang.com, All Rights Reserved.
 */
import javax.swing.*;
public class JEditorPaneTest {
   JFrame myFrame = null;
   public static void main(String[] a) {
      (new JEditorPaneTest()).test();
   }
   private void test() {
      myFrame = new JFrame("JEditorPane Test");
      myFrame.setDefaultCloseOperation(JFrame.EXIT_ON_CLOSE);
      myFrame.setSize(300,200);
      
      JEditorPane myPane = new JEditorPane();
      myPane.setContentType("text/plain");
      myPane.setText(
         "JEditorPane is a text component to edit various kinds of"
         +" content.\n\nThis component uses implementations of the"
         +" EditorKit to accomplish its behavior.");

      myFrame.setContentPane(myPane);
      myFrame.setVisible(true);
   }
}

If you run this example, you will see a text editor pane displayed with the initial text content.

You can edit initial text or add more text. You can also select a part of the text as shown in the picture below:
Editor Pane Test