The very first thing we need to do is to initialize the NetBeans Editor Library settings stuff. You can do it yourself, like this:

import org.netbeans.editor.*;
...
Settings.addInitializer( new BaseSettingsInitializer(), Settings.CORE_LEVEL );
Settings.addInitializer( new ExtSettingsInitializer(), Settings.CORE_LEVEL );
Settings.reset();

Or, as we'll see in a minute, you can let the tiny library to do it for you.

After initializing the NetBeans Editor Library settings mechanism, you can add your own settings, using a similar code:

import org.netbeans.editor.*;
...
Settings.addInitializer( new MyCustomSettingsInitializer() );
Settings.reset();

Or, if you wish, you can let the tiny library do it for you too.

Note that the "MyCustomSettingsInitializer" is a class you have to build. This "SettingsInitializer" is valid for a given mime type, so all those settings will be used for all editors of that type.

The "SettingsInitializer" is the place where you specify the settings for your editor, such as if line numbers are to be visible, or if you want antialiased text, or if you want to make the status bar visible, the height between lines in the editor and tons of many other options.

For more information on the set of settings available please see the SettingsNames class.

After adding your settings to the hierarchy of settings, you need to register your editor kit using Swing's registration mechanism (JEditorPane.registerEditorKitForContentType). Again you can do it yourself, like this:

import javax.swing.JEditorPane;
...
MyCustomEditorKit kit = new MyCustomEditorKit();
JEditorPane.registerEditorKitForContentType(
  kit.getContentType(),
  kit.getClass().getName() );

Or, of course, you can let the tiny library do this for you, as we'll see in a minute.

Finally you may want to add your preferred key bindings to a huge variety of actions. You can do it yourself, like this:

JEditorPane pane = new JEditorPane();
pane.setContentType( kit.getContentType() );
pane.getInputMap().put( 
  KeyStroke.getKeyStroke("DELETE"),
  ExtKit.deleteNextCharAction );

Or, again, you can let the tiny library add lots of key bindings for you. Note that the "ExtKit" class has tons of interesting actions that you can reuse in JMenus and JButtons or wherever. This set of actions is the most powerful I've seen so far out there.

If you have followed all the steps above then you should be able to edit text in your JEditorPane without problems. In fact the JEditorPane will render the different tokens with the colors that you have specified in the TokenColorizer.

So far so good. But, where's the NetBeans editor status bar? Why can't we see a bar with line numbers?

The fact is that those little features are only available if you use a custom JComponent responsible for rendering text. Well, of course! JEditorPanes don't have line numbers after all!

So we need a custom JComponent responsible for rendering the status bar and the line number bar. And such a JComponent is created like this:

JEditorPane myEditorPane = ...
JComponent myEditorComponent = 
  ExtUtilities.getExtEditorUI( myEditorPane ).getExtComponent();

Or, again, you can use the tiny library as we'll see in a minute.

The created JComponent has some interesting properties. Apart of presenting the line number bar and status bar (if you have made them visible in your custom EditorSettings object), there're some other important things to note: