Scrollbars and awt.List

Question

Hello,
I'm a first year student form the Netherlands in software design. And as of this semester I'm getting Java (finally a new language to learn!). Everything has gone very smoothly, I was hoping of more of a challenge trying to learn it, but it goes very easily (maybe I shouldn't have programmed in C++ for 3 years :P).
Though now I'm having a slight problem with my code. v _ v '
My project has to be competly in awt widget's, and I thought I'd do something more than required (it would seem that my teachers expect me to ^ _ ^).
In this list I'm required to use a fixed width font to "simulate" 2 panels (almost similar to the TableList in Swing) with a pipe ( | ) character as a line. It means that I need to cut off words that cross the boundry.
The above (and the rest of the assignment) works perfectly (and I've done the actual required part in less than 30 minutes), but now I've come to want to add tool tips to all the elements.
I've made a tooltip class (it works btw), but I need to get the item in the list my mouse is hovering over.
I believe a row is 20 pixels high (or something like that), so I divide the y value (of the local mouse position) by 20 and use the integer part as the index.
And here comes the problem.
When the list scrolls then the method I described above won't work anymore.
I think that my method is (atleast) similar as to what other programs do, save that it adds the scroll info as well.
Now here's my real problem. I can't (or don't know how) to get the scrollbar info from the list. I know there's a handy function is Swing, but I'm only allowed to use awt.
I've also read that the scrollbars are part of the peer's (native to the OS) so I can't access them.
So my true question is, what (if any) event should I listen to, to get scroll movements (not mouse wheel scrolling)?
And if there isn't any way to listen to the events, then do you have any idea how to tackle this problem?
Thank you for your time,
MLeoDaalder

Answer 1

Showing me your misbehaving output is not helpful.
I have successfully implemented what you are attempting, using Swing which I understand you cannot use but it should work the same way using AWT.
My main class extends JFrame (you would extend Frame) and implements MouseMotionListener. The mouseMoved(MouseEvent evt) method in the main class updates the tool tip, based on the evt.getX() and evt.getY().
I have a class (call it LCanvas) that extends JPanel (you would extend Panel) . The class adds a MouseMotionListener and has a paint(Graphics g) method that records the borders of each line that gets painted by g.drawString(String s, int x, int y). (Some of the painted lines may be outside of the displayed area.)
When I construct LCanvas, I pass it the JFrame (you would use Frame) of the main class. So my contructor looks like:
public LCanvas(JFrame f) {
addMouseMotionListener((MouseMotionListener) f);
Back in main(String [ ] args), I set up my scrollable window as:
MainClass f = new MainClass();
LCanvas lc = new LCanvas(f);
JScrollPane sp = new JScrollPane(lc);
content_pane.add(sp);
I don't know how you are trying to implement this but you should be able to compare it to my implementation that works and, since you are such a clever guy, figure out what's going wrong.