Print multi-colored characters in a sentence

[Jeff Smith]

Hello All,

I just taught Java to myself this past week, and so not surprisingly, I'm stuck with this program.

Basically I want to print out two sequences in separate lines in a JTextPane (I realized JTextArea is incapable of multi-colored edits). For each position in the sequences, if the two sequences have the same character, I want to print the character in black. Otherwise, if they differ at a particular spot, I want to print the two different letters of the two sequences in red. Here is my code for that:

for( int posBY = 0; posBY < byOutput.length(); posBY++ )
{
SimpleAttributeSet attrs = new SimpleAttributeSet();

if( byOutput.charAt( posBY ) == rmOutput.charAt( posBY ))
{
outputArea.setText(outputArea.getText()+byOutput.c harAt (posBY)+"");
StyledDocument sdoc = outputArea.getStyledDocument();
StyleConstants.setForeground( attrs, Color.BLACK);
sdoc.setCharacterAttributes( byOutput.charAt( posBY ), 1, attrs, true);
}
else
{
outputArea.setText(outputArea.getText()+byOutput.c harAt (posBY)+"");
StyledDocument sdoc = outputArea.getStyledDocument();
StyleConstants.setForeground( attrs, Color.RED);
sdoc.setCharacterAttributes( byOutput.charAt( posBY ), 1, attrs, true);
}
}

But this doesn't work, because my output is all in black characters.

Do you guys know what I'm doing wrong?

Thanks for the help! :)

[hardwired]

You need to make up the styles and add them to the styledDocument and use/refer to them in applying them to text at various positions in the document.
For an example see the section An Example of Using a Text Pane on How to Use Editor Panes and Text Panes.