The final solution to greek characters in AWT applets(????)

Question

OK. I have searched the whole web and asked whoever I knew. The question was simple: How do I show greek characters in a TextField in an AWT Applet? Some people said that I should change the font properties inside MY jre/lib installation but then I want EVERYONE and not just ME seeing the greek characters! Adding a greek font into the applet's jar was another "solution" but who wants to have an applet of about 2MBs? So I think I have come up to the answer ... ONLY with jre > 1.4.0 somebody could handle greek characters in AWT Applets without trooble! If somebody has managed to show and handle greek characters in a TextField inside an AWT Applet (which I doubt), I would like to know EXACTLY HOW as I am tired of non-working "solutions"! I hope this post saves you from a lot of time searching for the HolyGrail

Answer 1

I haven't worked with a TextField but I worked with a JTextField. My solution wasn't very straightforward but it did the job.
I used this solution in order to work with linux, but you must add an if
statement to check the OS.
If your problem was how to view Greek characters in a non internation version of
Java, then as far as I know, you cannot! Also JDK 1.3.1_01 and j2re 1.4.0_01
use a different way of loading system fonts, so with the latter you cannot use system fonts unless you put them in you java directory.
(I use linux so don't be surprissed if these work different in windows)
import java.io.*;
public class JTextFieldGr extends javax.swing.JTextField {
public JTextFieldGr() {
super();
myInit();
public JTextFieldGr(String text) {
super(text);
myInit();
public void myInit() {
addKeyListener(new java.awt.event.KeyListener() {
public void keyTyped(java.awt.event.KeyEvent evt){
try{
String tmp=""+evt.getKeyChar();
String uk=new String(tmp.getBytes(),"ISO-8859-7");
evt.setKeyChar(uk.charAt(0));
}catch(UnsupportedEncodingException e){
e.printStackTrace();
public void keyPressed(java.awt.event.KeyEvent evt){
public void keyReleased(java.awt.event.KeyEvent evt){
}