Hello. Does anyone know how I would set the colour of a string before printing it so that the string changes colour?
Thanks.
+1
A:
Hi you can use g.setColor(). Assuming you use Graphics g in an AWT context.
Please refer to the documentation for additional information.
Tomh
2009-02-19 13:15:07
A:
Strings don't encapsulate color information. Are you thinking of setting the color in a console or in the GUI?
Jim
2009-02-19 13:17:59
A:
public class colorString
{
public static void main( String[] args )
{
new colorString();
}
public colorString( )
{
kFrame f = new kFrame();
f.setSize( 400, 400 );
f.setVisible( true );
}
private static class kFrame extends JFrame
{
@Override
public void paint(Graphics g)
{
super.paint( g );
Graphics2D g2d = (Graphics2D)g;
g2d.setColor( new Color(255, 0, 0) );
g2d.drawString("red red red red red", 100, 100 );
}
}
}
jedierikb
2009-02-19 13:21:56
It's a nice Idea but is it possible to get it to set the String's colour in the Jframe I have already created (Instead of in a new JFrame) as the class I am working on is a gui and I want to colour the text and print it to a JTextArea?
2009-02-19 13:55:36
A:
If you're printing to stdout, it depends on the terminal you're printing to. You can use ansi escape codes on xterms and other similar terminal emulators. Here's a bash code snippet that will print all 255 colors supported by xterm, putty and Konsole:
for ((i=0;i<256;i++)); do echo -en "\e[38;5;"$i"m"$i" "; done
You can use these escape codes in any programming language. It's better to rely on a library that will decide which codes to use depending on architecture and the content of the TERM environment variable.
heeen
2009-02-19 13:27:38
+2
A:
Google aparently has a library for this sort of thing: http://code.google.com/p/jlibs/wiki/AnsiColoring
There's also a Javaworld article on this which solves your problem: http://www.javaworld.com/javaworld/javaqa/2002-12/02-qa-1220-console.html
Rolf
2009-02-19 13:52:50
+4
A:
Console
See the Wikipedia page on ANSI escapes for the full collection of sequences, including the colors.
But for one simple example (Printing in red) in Java (as you tagged this as Java) do:
System.out.println("\u001B31;1mhello world!");
The 3 indicates change color, the first 1 indicates red (green would be 2) and the second 1 indicates do it in "bright" mode.
GUI
However, if you want to print to a GUI the easiest way is to use html:
JEditorPane pane = new new JEditorPane();
pane.setText("<html><font color=\"red\">hello world!</font></html>");
For more details on this sort of thing, see the Swing Tutorial. It is also possible by using styles in a JTextPane. Here is a helpful example of code to do this easily with a JTextPane (added from helpful comment).
JTextArea is a single coloured Text component, as described here. It can only display in one color. You can set the color for the whole JTextArea like this:
JTextArea area = new JTextArea("hello world");
area.setForeground(Color.red)
Nick Fortescue
2009-02-19 14:04:50
I used "result.append("\u001B31;1mhello world!");" instead where result is a JTextArea. Would that make a difference?
2009-02-19 14:16:19
This code was for output to a text window, and on a Windows/DOS machine would only work if ANSI.sys installed. I've just added a swing method, as you are using a GUI
Nick Fortescue
2009-02-19 14:20:34
Java doesn't like the term 'red' in your gui example because it is not in the quotes and it doesn't recognise that term like that.
2009-02-19 14:24:57
Doesn't work for me, not inside IDEA, neither on Linux terminal emulator (rxvt), it just prints 1;1mhello world!
Jonik
2009-02-19 14:25:10
Sorry, can't do a JTextArea in more than one color as now described in the main text. You'll have to switch to JTextPane or JEditorPane, but they aren't too different, and the tutorial is pretty good
Nick Fortescue
2009-02-19 14:28:52
So you can't actually set the colour of the text before printing it to the Text area? because I don't want to set the colour of the backgroud, I want to set the colour of the text(String) before it is printed to the screen.
2009-02-19 14:28:53
http://www.java2s.com/Code/Java/Swing-JFC/ExtensionofJTextPanethatallowstheusertoeasilyappendcoloredtexttothedocument.htm
jedierikb
2009-02-19 14:29:43
No, you can't if you use JTextArea. If you use JTextPane or JEditorPane you can.
Nick Fortescue
2009-02-19 14:33:42