CODEWITHSUNDEEP
javaswingprintingdialogjtextarea
tonychow0929
tonychow0929

Reputation: 466

JTextArea print dialog

Recently I have been working on a project which uses Java Swing to build the GUI. I want to print the text in a JTextArea and therefore I wrote something like

boolean printed = textArea.print();

This brings up a modal dialog. However the dialog seems to have no parent and the main frame (the one containing textArea) blocks the print dialog.

enter image description here

As you see, the print dialog (the thin line at the bottom) goes behind the main JFrame.

Code:

import java.awt.*;
import java.awt.print.*;
import javax.swing.*;

public class JTextAreaPrintBug {
    public static void main(String[] args) {
        SwingUtilities.invokeLater(new Runnable() {
            @Override
            public void run() {
                JFrame frame = new JFrame();
                frame.setDefaultCloseOperation(JFrame.EXIT_ON_CLOSE);
                frame.setSize(600,600);
                frame.setLocationRelativeTo(null);
                frame.setAlwaysOnTop(true);
                //now add JTextArea
                frame.setLayout(new BorderLayout());
                JTextArea textArea = new JTextArea();
                frame.add(textArea, BorderLayout.CENTER);
                frame.setVisible(true);
                try {
                    textArea.print();
                } catch (PrinterException ex) {}
            }
        });
    }
}

Is it possible to bring the print dialog to front (or explicitly set the parent of the print dialog), preferably not reinventing the wheel? Thanks in advance.

Edit: I know there is a line frame.setAlwaysOnTop(true);. What I really want is to bring the print dialog to the very front even if the main frame is always on top.

Edit (2): I finally opted for a workaround which uses a WindowFocusListener and the getOppositeWindow() method in WindowEvent to obtain a reference to the print dialog. Still I resort to reflection (getting the name of the instance's class) to check whether the "opposite window" is a print dialog, or just an ordinary dialog in my application. Anyway, welcome for more elegant solutions.

Upvotes: 1

Views: 756

Answers (1)

K139
K139

Reputation: 3669

It's because of this 

frame.setAlwaysOnTop(true);

So change it to false to see the print window.

or

Remove that line, if you don't want your main window to block other windows. Default value is false anyway.

Upvotes: 2

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