Mouse over - how to select text

Question

Hi all,
I trying to build a function that when the mouse is moved over a text, then that text is selected and some actions are performed. At the moment I am using the g.drawstring() to place the text inside a jPanel, remember the XY coordinate of that text and then, when the mouseMoved event is trigger I compare the mouse position with the original drawing coordinate. It works fine if the string is single character, but it gets very complicated when the string is made up of several words "Hello Java" and I would like to select only the "Hello" or the "Java", as I don't know in advance the XY coordinate of the second word, as the font is not proportional (what I am doing now, is search for the " " and set boundaries of each individual word within the string...a bit cumbersome, but kind of works
My Question is:
is there a better way to place the string on the panel, other than the g.drawstring() that can make reading and identifying much easier? perhaps, placing the string inside some kind of other component which the mouse that 'identify' to be over more easily?
thanks for the help
P.S. I have read some posts, which address specific questions; mine is more a question on best architecture/availability of Java.components/API that can be used to do my task in the best way.

Answer 1

thanks for your reply.
I am basically trying to draw a node and edge pattern, where the nodes are the text strings and the edges are simple lines. posX and posY are the coordinate of where to strings are drawn. Now, what I would like to do is to move the mouse over and highlight (for exampl) the string but only single words, not the whole string (which could be, for exampl, "Hello Java"), so highilighting either Hello or Java, depending on where the mouse is. But I need to place the string (or the JLabel or JText) at specific posX, posY coordinates inside my JPanel.
protected void paintComponent(Graphics g) {
super.paintComponent(g);
/** SOME CODE*/
Font font = new Font("Arial Unicode MS", Font.PLAIN, 20);
g.setFont(font);
g.setColor(Color.black);
g.drawString(textString panelXSize/2-posX, panelYSize/2-posY);
g.drawLine(panelXSize/2, panelYSize/2,panelXSize/2-posX, panelYSize/2-posY);
}