How to set selected text on JTextPane ?

Question

I need to set selected text on a JTextPane. I used setSelectionStart(); and setSelectionEnd(); but it doesn't work.
Can anybody help me?

Answer 1

I'm not sure if this is what you are looking for, but the following code sample was revised from the tutorial TextSamplerDemo.java. It will hightlight the word "selected" in yellow in the JTextPane.
//created with j2sdk1.4.0_01
import javax.swing.*;
import javax.swing.text.*;
import java.awt.*;
import java.awt.event.*;      
public class SelectedText extends JFrame {
    public SelectedText() {
        super("Selected Text");       
        //Create a text pane.
        JTextPane textPane = createTextPane();
        JScrollPane paneScrollPane = new JScrollPane(textPane);
        paneScrollPane.setVerticalScrollBarPolicy(JScrollPane.VERTICAL_SCROLLBAR_ALWAYS);
        paneScrollPane.setPreferredSize(new Dimension(250, 155));
        paneScrollPane.setMinimumSize(new Dimension(10, 10));
        Container pane = getContentPane();
        pane.add(paneScrollPane);
    private JTextPane createTextPane() {
        JTextPane textPane = new JTextPane();
        String[] initString =
                { "This is the ", //regular
                  "selected",     //selected
                  " text. "       //regular
        String[] initStyles = {"regular", "selected", "regular"};
        initStylesForTextPane(textPane);
        Document doc = textPane.getDocument();
        try {
            for (int i=0; i < initString.length; i++) {
                doc.insertString(doc.getLength(), initString,
textPane.getStyle(initStyles[i]));
} catch (BadLocationException ble) {
System.err.println("Couldn't insert initial text.");
return textPane;
protected void initStylesForTextPane(JTextPane textPane) {
//Initialize some styles.
Style def = StyleContext.getDefaultStyleContext().getStyle(StyleContext.DEFAULT_STYLE);
Style regular = textPane.addStyle("regular", def);
StyleConstants.setFontFamily(def, "SansSerif");
Style s = textPane.addStyle("selected", regular);
StyleConstants.setBackground(s, Color.YELLOW);
public static void main(String[] args) {
JFrame frame = new SelectedText();
frame.addWindowListener(new WindowAdapter() {
public void windowClosing(WindowEvent e) {
System.exit(0);
frame.pack();
frame.setVisible(true);
S.L.