Copy operation using key accelerators

Question

i have an application in which i have a jtree representation of an xml file, and also a syntactic view. I have introduced an edit menu with copy and paste operations, in which the associated action listeners determine what view the user is in, and then performs the relevent copy, cut or paste action i.e if in tree view the the specialised copy prodedure of the node is called, if in the sytactic view the JTextCompoenets copy() method is called.
This procedure using the buttons performs fine, but when i added key accelerators to the menu items, a problem occured. For example the key accelerators for copy was set to CTRL C, this works fine for the JTextComponent, but if used to try and copy a tree node it copies the string as a result of calling the user objects toString() mehtod, and not the specialised copy procedure as before.
Im not sure why this is happening if the copy procedure works fine with when selecting the menu, but does something different when the key accelerators are pressed.
//menu item
menuItem = new JMenuItem("Copy");
menuItem.setActionCommand("copy");
menuItem.addActionListener(this);
menuItem.setAccelerator(KeyStroke.getKeyStroke(
          KeyEvent.VK_C, ActionEvent.CTRL_MASK));
//in action listener action performed method
if ("copy".equals(e.getActionCommand()))
     int sel = tabbedPane.getSelectedIndex();
     if(sel == 0)
          treePane.copy(); //specialised jtree
     else
          mainDisplay.copy(); //text area          
any ideas?
Adam

Answer 1

Are you sure that your action listener is the one that's doing the copying?
There's a good chance that "control C" is already mapped by your JTextComponent and JTree to their default "copy" actions.
Try getting it to print something out when your action listener is called or check whether you get the same behaviour if you don't add the accelerator for the menu item.
If you want specialised behaviour it's often worthwhile replacing the "copy" action in the component's actionMap with your own action. That way all the existing key mappings that perform the action will automatically end up invoking the specialised action instead.
Hope this helps.