RichTextFX

RichTextFX provides a text area for JavaFX with API to style ranges of text. It is intended as a base for rich-text editors and code editors with syntax highlighting.

Scroll down to Demos to see it in action.

There is plenty of room for enhancements, e.g. support for paragraph-level styles (#6), placing arbitrary nodes in the text (#87), copy/paste including style information (#17), ... To give me or someone else more incentive to implement these or other features, you can create a bounty.

Features

• Assign arbitrary styles to arbitrary ranges of text.
• Display line numbers or, more generally, any graphic in front of each paragraph. Can be used to show breakpoint toggles on each line of code.
• Positioning a popup window relative to the caret or selection. Useful e.g. to position an autocompletion box.
• Getting the character index under the mouse when the mouse stays still over the text for a specified period of time. Useful for displaying tooltips depending on the word under the mouse.

Flavors

StyleClassedTextArea

StyleClassedTextArea lets you assign style classes to ranges of text. You can define the style classes in your stylesheet.

Example.java:

area.setStyleClass(from, to, "red");

example.css:

.red { -fx-fill: red; }

This renders the text in the range [from, to) in red.

Note that the style classes are assigned to instances of Text, so you can specify any CSS properties applicable to a Text node.

CodeArea

CodeArea is a variant of StyleClassedTextArea that uses a fixed width font by default, making it a convenient base for source code editors. CodeArea is used in the Java Keywords demo below.

InlineCssTextArea

InlineCssTextArea lets you specify inline CSS for a range of text.

area.setStyle(from, to, "-fx-font-weight: bold;");

Again, you can use any CSS properties applicable to a Text node.

InlineStyleTextArea

InlineStyleTextArea<S> is a more general version of InlineCssTextArea. In the end, there is still inline CSS assigned to Text nodes, but instead of using the CSS string directly, you use an instance of your custom style representation S and provide a way (function) to convert S to CSS string in InlineStyleTextArea constructor.

class MyStyleInfo {
    boolean bold;
    boolean italic;
    
    String toCss() {
        return "-fx-font-weight: " + (bold ? "bold" : "normal") + ";"
               + "-fx-font-style: " + (italic ? "italic" : "normal") + ";";
    }
}

InlineStyleTextArea<MyStyleInfo> area =
        new InlineStyleTextArea<>(new MyStyleInfo(), styleInfo -> styleInfo.toCss());

The first constructor argument is the default style to use for ranges of text where you don't set the style explicitly. The second constructor argument is the function to convert the custom style representation to CSS.

You then assign an instance of your custom style representation to a range of text.

MyStyleInfo styleInfo = ...;

area.setStyle(from, to, styleInfo);

You appreciate the benefits of this approach over InlineCssTextArea when you need to query the style used at a given position in text - you get back an instance of your style representation instead of a CSS string.

MyStyleInfo styleInfo = area.getStyleAt(charIndex);

InlineStyleTextArea is used in the Rich-text demo below.

Requirements

JDK8 is required, because TextFlow, introduced in JavaFX 8.0, is used to render each line. Also, there's a heavy use of lambdas, defender methods and the stream API in the code base.

Demos

Automatic highlighting of Java keywords

Run using the pre-built JAR

Download the pre-built "fat" JAR file and run

java -cp richtextfx-demos-fat-0.5.1.jar org.fxmisc.richtext.demo.JavaKeywords

or

java -cp richtextfx-demos-fat-0.5.1.jar org.fxmisc.richtext.demo.JavaKeywordsAsync

Run from the source repo

gradle JavaKeywords

or

gradle JavaKeywordsAsync

Source code

JavaKeywords.java

JavaKeywordsAsync.java

The former computes highlighting on the JavaFX application thread, while the latter computes highlighting on a background thread.

Rich-text editor

Run using the pre-built JAR

Download the pre-built "fat" JAR file and run

java -cp richtextfx-demos-fat-0.5.1.jar org.fxmisc.richtext.demo.RichText

Run from the source repo

gradle RichText

Source code

RichText.java

Custom tooltips

When the mouse pauses over the text area, you can get index of the character under the mouse. This allows you to implement, for example, custom tooltips whose content depends on the text under the mouse.

Run using the pre-built JAR

Download the pre-built "fat" JAR file and run

java -cp richtextfx-demos-fat-0.5.1.jar org.fxmisc.richtext.demo.TooltipDemo

Run from the source repo

gradle TooltipDemo

Source code

TooltipDemo.java

Use RichTextFX in your project

Stable release

Current stable release is 0.5.1.

Maven coordinates

Group ID	Artifact ID	Version
org.fxmisc.richtext	richtextfx	0.5.1

Gradle example

dependencies {
    compile group: 'org.fxmisc.richtext', name: 'richtextfx', version: '0.5.1'
}

Sbt example

libraryDependencies += "org.fxmisc.richtext" % "richtextfx" % "0.5.1"

Manual download

Download the JAR file or the fat JAR file (including dependencies) and place it on your classpath.

Snapshot releases

Snapshot releases are deployed to Sonatype snapshot repository.

Maven coordinates

Group ID	Artifact ID	Version
org.fxmisc.richtext	richtextfx	1.0.0-SNAPSHOT

Gradle example

repositories {
    maven {
        url 'https://oss.sonatype.org/content/repositories/snapshots/' 
    }
}

dependencies {
    compile group: 'org.fxmisc.richtext', name: 'richtextfx', version: '1.0.0-SNAPSHOT'
}

Sbt example

resolvers += "Sonatype OSS Snapshots" at "https://oss.sonatype.org/content/repositories/snapshots"

libraryDependencies += "org.fxmisc.richtext" % "richtextfx" % "1.0.0-SNAPSHOT"

Who uses RichTextFX?

Kappa IDE
Squirrel SQL client (its JavaFX version)
mqtt-spy
Alt.Text
Xanthic

Please, let me know if you use RichTextFX in your project and would like it to be listed here.

License

Dual-licensed under BSD 2-Clause License and GPLv2 with the Classpath Exception.

Links

API Documentation (Javadoc)
Dropped Features
Known Issues