Syntax coloring for the Swing editor pane

June 27th, 2008

Ayman Al-Sairafi has a very useful project called JSyntaxPane which provides syntax highlighting capabilities for the JEditorPane Swing component, supporting Java, XML, Groovy and JavaScript. I’ve already mentioned this project on the latest “Swing links of the week”, and this week i’ve integrated it into the Rainbow SVG file viewer.

Rainbow is a testbed for integrating various desktop projects and building an SVG browser for both local and remote (SVN) repositories. Instead of reinventing the wheel, it uses third-party libraries for the various UI building blocks. Here is the list of the libraries:

  • Apache Batik for parsing and transcoding the SVG format.
  • Flamingo for the breadcrumb bar, command button and command button panel components.
  • Substance for the look-and-feel.
  • JXLayer for the spotlight search functionality and applying effects before saving as image.
  • JHLabs filters for applying effects before saving as image.
  • SVNKit for working with SVN repositories.
  • FormLayout for the layout of the top bar and status bar.
  • JSyntaxPane for highlighting the XML and Java2D content.

When you click on any SVG icon, Rainbow shows three views of that icon. The first view shows the original SVG XML content, the second view shows the transcoded Java2D class, and the third view allows applying a number of filters and save the image. The JSyntaxPane comes in handy for the first two views – Rainbow now shows the XML and Java2D content with applied syntax highlighting.

Here is a screenshot of the XML content (click for the full view):


and here is a screenshot of the Java2D class (click for the full view):


The JSyntaxPane is available under Apache 2.0 license.