JTable focus w/ editable headers

Question

I have three JTables which act as a core, a row header, and a column header, like a spreadsheet. All tables have mutiple columns/row, and all of the cells are editable. I want one cell among all three tables to be selected/editable at one time. I have tried two separate approches.
1. on focusLost, clear the selection and stopCellEditing.
2. on focusGained, clear the selections and stopCellEditing in all the other tables.
The focusLost solution fails because when you are editing a cell and click outside of the table, the focus doesn't get lost.
The focusGained solution fails because when stopCellEditing is called, that cell regains focus. Now the very cell which I didn't want to have focus has it again.
I've been working on this for much too long (was up 'til 5am) and am completely stalled. Any ideas?

Answer 1

Well I've tried something similar to that, but the "cleanup" is where things really mess up. Say every time I get a focusGain event, I store the table it happened in. The next I get one, just check to see if they're the same value and if not unset the others right? Well unfortunately it doesn't work.
Say I'm editing (with cursor, ie the value hasn't been saved) in table 2. Now I click on table 1. Table 1 tells the other tables to clearSelection() and stopCellEditing() (to save the value which hadn't been). However, as soon as table 2 gets the call to stopCellEditing, it takes back the focus. Like this
1. Double click table 2; editing
2. Single click table 1
3. Table 1 gets focusGained, tells other tables to clear
4. Table 2 calls stopCellEditing on itself
Then, because of the stopCellEditing,
5. Table 1 gets focusLost
6. Table 2 gets focusGained
... but we should be in table 1!!
If JTable didn't have a bug, then after step 2 table 2 should get a focusLost event, but it doesn't. The more I think about this problem the more I get stuck. Any brainstorming is appreciated!