CTRL+Enter to go to next line

Question

Hi
We have one chat application for which we have used TextArea for typing the messages. What we need is, while entering text in this TextArea, if we press CTRL+Enter cursor should go to next line(without posting the first line).
Any ideas for achieving this would be of great help. I am looking at achieving this by using keyboard events.
Sumukh

Answer 1

Here's a demo I just whipped up: Control+Enter will change the text color in the
current textarea, and I wired the action to a menu item as well.
import java.awt.*;
import java.awt.event.*;
import java.util.*;
import javax.swing.*;
import javax.swing.text.*;
public class ExampleAction extends TextAction {
    private Random rnd = new Random();
    public ExampleAction() {
        super("Example Action");
    public void actionPerformed(ActionEvent e) {
        JTextComponent comp = getFocusedComponent();
        if (comp != null)
            comp.setForeground(new Color(rnd.nextInt(0x1000000)));
    public static void mapTo(JComponent comp, Action action, KeyStroke ks) {
        Object name = action.getValue(Action.NAME);
        comp.getInputMap().put(ks, name);
        comp.getActionMap().put(name, action);
    public static void main(String[] args) {
        Action action = new ExampleAction();
        Object name = action.getValue(Action.NAME);
        KeyStroke controlEnter = KeyStroke.getKeyStroke(KeyEvent.VK_ENTER, InputEvent.CTRL_MASK);
        JTextArea area1 = new JTextArea(20,72);
        JTextArea area2 = new JTextArea(20,72);
        mapTo(area1, action, controlEnter);
        mapTo(area2, action, controlEnter);
        final JSplitPane sp = new JSplitPane(JSplitPane.HORIZONTAL_SPLIT,
            new JScrollPane(area1), new JScrollPane(area2));
        sp.setPreferredSize(new Dimension(400,300));
        final JFrame f = new JFrame("ExampleAction");
        JMenuBar mb = new JMenuBar();
        f.setJMenuBar(mb);
        JMenu menu = new JMenu("Actions");
        menu.add(action);
        mb.add(menu);
        f.setDefaultCloseOperation(JFrame.EXIT_ON_CLOSE);
        f.getContentPane().add(sp);
        f.pack();
        SwingUtilities.invokeLater(new Runnable(){
            public void run() {
                f.setLocationRelativeTo(null);
                sp.setDividerLocation(0.5);
                f.setVisible(true);
}