HELP !! change the line height in JTextArea ??

Question

can anyone tell me , how to change (set) the line height in JTextArea ???

Answer 1

Looking at the source code for JTextArea, the rowHeight is taken from the font's FontMetrics and is used to set the preferred size of the ta, as you can see in the following app. Also, only three properties are maintained by the default PlainDocument as shown in the output. Might be worth your while to check out JTextPane.
import java.awt.*;
import java.awt.event.*;
import java.beans.*;
import java.text.*;
import java.util.*;
import javax.swing.*;
import javax.swing.event.*;
import javax.swing.text.*;
public class TARowHeight {
  public static void main(String[] args) {
    final CustomTextArea ta = new CustomTextArea(5,10);
    ta.addPropertyChangeListener(new PropertyChangeListener() {
      public void propertyChange(PropertyChangeEvent e) {
        System.out.println(e.getPropertyName() + " changed to " + e.getNewValue());
    ta.setLineWrap(true);
    ta.setWrapStyleWord(true);
    ta.setFont(new Font("lucida sans regular" , Font.PLAIN, 16));
    JPanel centerPanel = new JPanel();
    centerPanel.add(ta);
    SpinnerNumberModel model = new SpinnerNumberModel(20,8,36,1);
    final JSpinner spinner = new JSpinner(model);
    spinner.addChangeListener(new ChangeListener() {
      public void stateChanged(ChangeEvent e) {
        int height = ((Integer)spinner.getValue()).intValue();
        ta.setRowHeight(height);
        ta.revalidate();
        ta.repaint();
    JPanel southPanel = new JPanel();
    southPanel.add(spinner);
    JFrame f = new JFrame();
    f.setDefaultCloseOperation(JFrame.EXIT_ON_CLOSE);
    f.getContentPane().add(new JScrollPane(centerPanel), "Center");
    f.getContentPane().add(southPanel, "South");
    f.setSize(300,200);
    f.setLocation(400,400);
    f.setVisible(true);
    System.out.println(ta.getRowHeight());
    Dictionary names = ((AbstractDocument)ta.getDocument()).getDocumentProperties();
    Enumeration keys = names.keys();
    Enumeration values = names.elements();
    while(keys.hasMoreElements())
      System.out.println("key: " + keys.nextElement() +
                         " value: " + values.nextElement());
class CustomTextArea extends JTextArea {
  private int rowHeight;
  public CustomTextArea(int rows, int cols) {
    super(rows, cols);
  protected int getRowHeight() {
        if (rowHeight == 0) {
            FontMetrics metrics = getFontMetrics(getFont());
            rowHeight = metrics.getHeight();
        return rowHeight;
  protected void setRowHeight(int rowHeight) {
    int oldVal = this.rowHeight;
    this.rowHeight = rowHeight;
    firePropertyChange("rowHeight", oldVal, rowHeight);
}