How do I left justify the text in the tabs of a JTabbedPane.

Question

In 1.3.1 this used to work by supplying an HTML string with <div align="left"> but when I run with 1.4.1 this is now broken and I get center justification.
Does anybody know a way to get the text in the tabs to be left justified.
Thanks,
Philip

Answer 1

First, I found while using JTabbedPane that the "standard" behavior is to allow to a tab the exact space needed to display the tab text. Hence with this behavior, there is actualy no difference of "left" or "center" aligned text. So I assumed that you found a way or another to make your tabs wider than the "string width"...
Here is a solution:
You can override the TabbedPaneUI class and ajust the "layoutLabel()" method. Here is the code..
//Your code using the tabbedPane
JTabbedPane tp = new JTabbedPane();
tp.setUI(new LeftTabbedPaneUI());
//File containing the overrided TabbedPaneUI
import javax.swing.*;
import java.awt.*;
import java.awt.event.*;
import java.util.*;
import javax.swing.text.View;
class LeftTabbedPaneUI extends javax.swing.plaf.metal.MetalTabbedPaneUI {
        //I also overrided this function just to force tabs wider than
        //the displayed "String Width". I asume that you found another
        //way to do this so you can delete this function in your
        //implementation
     protected int calculateTabWidth(int tabPlacement, int tabIndex, FontMetrics metrics){
          return 150;
    protected void layoutLabel(int tabPlacement,
                               FontMetrics metrics, int tabIndex,
                               String title, Icon icon,
                               Rectangle tabRect, Rectangle iconRect,
                               Rectangle textRect, boolean isSelected ) {
        textRect.x = textRect.y = iconRect.x = iconRect.y = 0;
     View v = getTextViewForTab(tabIndex);
     if (v != null) {
         tabPane.putClientProperty("html", v);
     //This Line is added to avoid writing on tab border while aligned to left.
     //You can comment this line to test and or adjust the "5" pixel space
     Rectangle rec = new Rectangle(tabRect.x+5,tabRect.y,tabRect.width,tabRect.height);
        SwingUtilities.layoutCompoundLabel((JComponent) tabPane,
                                           metrics, title, icon,
                                           SwingUtilities.CENTER,
                                           SwingUtilities.LEFT,
                                           SwingUtilities.CENTER,
                                           SwingUtilities.TRAILING,
                                           rec,
                                           iconRect,
                                           textRect,
                                           textIconGap);
     tabPane.putClientProperty("html", null);
     int xNudge = getTabLabelShiftX(tabPlacement, tabIndex, isSelected);
     int yNudge = getTabLabelShiftY(tabPlacement, tabIndex, isSelected);
     iconRect.x += xNudge;
     iconRect.y += yNudge;
     textRect.x += xNudge;
     textRect.y += yNudge;
}Here I overrided the "Metal" implementation of the tab but you must override the implementation of the used Look And Feel,
ex. "com.sun.java.swing.plaf.window.WindowsTabbedPaneUI" for the windows LAF.