JEditorPane: how to replace small parts of the document?

Question

Hi
Im trying to create an application that will allow two people to type into two different JEditorPanes, but have the two people essentially editing the same document. So if one person types someting into thier frame, I want that modification sent to the other frame as well.
The problem I've come across is how to make changes to the contents of the frame without interfering with the person whos trying to type into it. That problem boils down to how do you replace only a small part of the document whithout taking control of the users caret?

Answer 1

Hopfully I got your problem right. To change only small parts of the EditorPane's document should not be the probelm you can get it with EditorPane.getDocument(). But I think you have to take control over the caret, because the when user 1 has finished editing and sends the doc to user 2 who is editing the doc, user 2's caret position will change because the document length has changed.
The easiest way would be to add an input area (TextArea) for each user where they can type theit text and than to add the text into the document when they press enter, so you don't have the trouble with te caret position. If you don't want to do this then you could try that: the input of the users is cached while they are typing (not changing the doc) till they press enter. Then the doc is send to the other user, the users doc in the pane is updated and his current typing is added to the end of the new received doc. You can figure out the correct position by doc.getLength() and set the new caret position to doc.length + currentTyping.length
Hope that helps
Eryk