How do I make nodes in my JTree render as JTextPanes ?

Question

As a newbie to Java, I developed an application which started out by by having a user select a value in a JList and associated information was formatted nicely into a JTextPane (really it is just making some bold/italic/regular font switches).
I now think it may be more visually appealing to represent the whole thing as a JTree, and the user would just click the +/- to access the associated information.
So I would like substitute the JTree for the JList, while keep my nicely formatted JTextPane and am a bit stuck. I'd like each item in the JList to be a node and the information is going to be a leaf.
Searching through the forums and other tutorials it I think I need to create a TreeCellRenderer that uses my JTextPane.
Aside from advice such as Prior Planning Prevents Poor Performance, can someone give me a gentle kick in the right direction ? Pseudo-code or links would be great !
Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

Hi codingMonkey,
I've looked at both of those (previously) but I've not got enough experience to figure out the coding bits for my application.
So lets say I wanted to hack the JTextPane example here http://java.sun.com/docs/books/tutorial/uiswing/components/editorpane.html and put a simple JTree in its place with three nodes and use the provided JTextPane as a text for the leafs.
I think the important bits (except are addStylesToDocument) are this:
private JTextPane createTextPane() {
        String[] initString =
                { "This is an editable JTextPane, ",            //regular
                  "another ",                                   //italic
                  "styled ",                                    //bold
                  "text ",                                      //small
                  "component, ",                                //large
                  "which supports embedded components..." + newline,//regular
                  " " + newline,                                //button
                  "...and embedded icons..." + newline,         //regular
                  " ",                                          //icon
                  newline + "JTextPane is a subclass of JEditorPane that " +
                    "uses a StyledEditorKit and StyledDocument, and provides " +
                    "cover methods for interacting with those objects."
        String[] initStyles =
                { "regular", "italic", "bold", "small", "large",
                  "regular", "button", "regular", "icon",
                  "regular"
        JTextPane textPane = new JTextPane();
        StyledDocument doc = textPane.getStyledDocument();
        addStylesToDocument(doc);
        try {
            for (int i=0; i < initString.length; i++) {
                doc.insertString(doc.getLength(), initString,
doc.getStyle(initStyles[i]));
} catch (BadLocationException ble) {
System.err.println("Couldn't insert initial text into text pane.");
return textPane;
I don't really understand the TreeCellRenderer API link you sent and how to link the above JTextPane to the TreeCellRenderer.