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Getting JTextArea to display fixed-width font without antialiasing

Does anybody know how to get JTextArea to display a fixed size font on all platforms?

I want to make a simple code editor with save/open functionality, which is simple enough, but I would like to get font to be fixed-size, preferably courier new.

The problem is that courier new is proprietary apparently, and not only is it not installed by default on many systems, but on most modern systems, it is set to cleartype be default, which makes it look like garbage.

I am tempted to make my own JPanel with update-render-paint and reinvent the JTextArea, and save fonts as fixed-size bitmaps, but this approach appears silly, and very time consuming.

I would like to include a free fixed-size font to the project and use that font on all platforms, which appears possible. However, modern systems appear to force-smooth all fonts, which I would like to prevent it from doing.

Sadly, it appears that Swing automatically abides by system preferences so without destroying user’s settings, it appears to be a no go.

So in short, is there a way to get JTextArea to display a fixed-width font and disable font smoothing/antialiasing (or at least toggle), or is this task impossible using swing?

Thanks ahead of time!

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Answer

You can use the logical font “monospaced”. While it guarantees to have a font that has the same size for all characters, it won’t be the same on all platform.

import java.awt.Font;

import javax.swing.JFrame;
import javax.swing.JScrollPane;
import javax.swing.JTextArea;
import javax.swing.SwingUtilities;

public class TestTextArea {

    private void initUI() {
        JFrame frame = new JFrame("test");
        frame.setDefaultCloseOperation(JFrame.EXIT_ON_CLOSE);
        JTextArea textArea = new JTextArea(24, 80);
        textArea.setFont(new Font(Font.MONOSPACED, Font.PLAIN, 12));
        frame.add(new JScrollPane(textArea));
        frame.pack();
        frame.setVisible(true);
    }

    public static void main(String[] args) {
        SwingUtilities.invokeLater(new Runnable() {
            @Override
            public void run() {
                new TestTextArea().initUI();
            }
        });

    }

}

Alternatively, you could look up a “free” font which meets your need, embed that font in with code and load it with java.awt.Font.createFont(int, InputStream).

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