Can't set selected text in a JTextArea (bizarre)!

Question

I've go this method here to select text in a JTextArea is doesn't work.
Any ideas?? I haven't posted ALL the code because there is quite a lot of it in a number of classes.
public void selection(int i)
          String meth = methods.get(i).toString();
          String tex = tc.getText();
          int pos = tex.indexOf(meth);
          if (pos != -1) {
               myTextComponent.setSelectionStart(pos);                myTextComponent.setSelectionEndpos+meth.length));                
     }

Answer 1

Selected text is only shown when the text component has focus. Assuming you are clicking on a button to invoke your code you would need to reset focus on the text field:
myTextComponent.requestFocus();