Need a Java guru :-)

Question

In my program I would like to have a method - "public boolean confirmAction()" - in the GUI. This method should present the user with some option, and return the reply.
In solving a similar problem I have used JOptionPane (with JDialog) for this behavior, but now I have a full-screen application and cannot use JFrame, JDialog or JInternalFrame.
First, I tried this approach:
public boolean confirmAction() {
// ConfirmPanel: The JPanel containing the question and the options.
confirmPanel.show();
return confirmPanel.getReply();
The method "getReply()" in "ConfirmPanel" waits until the user has choosen an option, and returns the outcome.
This workes fine if the caller of "confirmAction()" is not the "Event-Dispatching Thread" (EDT), but if the caller is the EDT this problem arises: While waiting for input from "getReply()" it may not process the events needed for making this reply and thereby causing a deadlock.
Do you know any good solutions for this problem?
I think one possible solution might be to channel the events from the "EventQueue" to the listener of "ConfirmPanel" while waiting for the reply - but this seems to be a dirty hack (and I have not tried it so I am unaware if it is possible)...
What do you think?

Answer 1

I found the solution I wanted!
To satisfy your curiosity jayDS:
The reason why I could not use dialogs was because I am developing a game. Using a JDesktopPane instead of just a JLayeredPane is slower (I have tested it). But JayDS, you guided me to the solution: I read the source for JInternalFrame and found "startModal()" with the code I needed (rerouting of the events).
Thanks for helping; jockamus, bbritta, Josh_Castagno and JayDS.
I have appended JInternalFrame.startModal():
try {
if (SwingUtilities.isEventDispatchThread()) {
EventQueue theQueue = getToolkit().getSystemEventQueue();
while (isVisible()) {
// This is essentially the body of EventDispatchThread
AWTEvent event = theQueue.getNextEvent();
Object src = event.getSource();
// can't call theQueue.dispatchEvent, so I pasted its body here
if (event instanceof ActiveEvent) {
((ActiveEvent) event).dispatch();
} else if (src instanceof Component) {
((Component) src).dispatchEvent(event);
} else if (src instanceof MenuComponent) {
((MenuComponent) src).dispatchEvent(event);
} else {
System.err.println("unable to dispatch event: " + event);
} else
while (isVisible())
wait();
} catch(InterruptedException e){}