I\'m trying to display tooltips in Java which may or may not be paragraph-length. How can I word-wrap long tooltips?
I know this one is quite old but i found a quite simple solution using HTML code!
Just use a HTML Paragraph with a fixed width:
setToolTipText("<html><p width=\"500\">" +value+"</p></html>");
Here is a version which I have used before, it works well if you are loading your tool tips from ResourceBundles:
import javax.swing.JComponent;
import javax.swing.JToolTip;
import javax.swing.LookAndFeel;
import javax.swing.UIManager;
import javax.swing.plaf.ComponentUI;
import javax.swing.plaf.ToolTipUI;
import java.awt.Dimension;
import java.awt.FontMetrics;
import java.awt.Graphics;
import java.util.regex.Pattern;
/**
* A tooltip that wraps multi-line text.
*/
public final class MultiLineToolTipUI extends ToolTipUI {
private static final int INSET = 2;
private static final Pattern LINE_SPLITTER = Pattern.compile("$", Pattern.MULTILINE);
private static final MultiLineToolTipUI SHARED_INSTANCE = new MultiLineToolTipUI();
/**
* Install the multi-line tooltip into the UI manager.
*/
public static void installUI() {
String toolTipUI = MultiLineToolTipUI.class.getName();
UIManager.put("ToolTipUI", toolTipUI);
UIManager.put(toolTipUI, MultiLineToolTipUI.class);
}
@SuppressWarnings("UnusedDeclaration")
public static ComponentUI createUI(JComponent c) {
return SHARED_INSTANCE;
}
private MultiLineToolTipUI() {}
@Override
public Dimension getMaximumSize(JComponent c) {
return getPreferredSize(c);
}
@Override
public Dimension getMinimumSize(JComponent c) {
return getPreferredSize(c);
}
@Override
public Dimension getPreferredSize(JComponent c) {
String[] lines = LINE_SPLITTER.split(((JToolTip) c).getTipText());
if (lines.length == 0) {
return new Dimension(2 * INSET, 2 * INSET);
}
FontMetrics metrics = c.getFontMetrics(c.getFont());
Graphics g = c.getGraphics();
int w = 0;
for (String line : lines) {
w = Math.max(w, (int) metrics.getStringBounds(line, g).getWidth());
}
int h = lines.length * metrics.getHeight();
return new Dimension(w + 2 * INSET, h + 2 * INSET);
}
@Override
public void installUI(JComponent c) {
LookAndFeel.installColorsAndFont(c, "ToolTip.background", "ToolTip.foreground", "ToolTip.font");
LookAndFeel.installBorder(c, "ToolTip.border");
}
@Override
public void paint(Graphics g, JComponent c) {
int w = c.getWidth(), h = c.getHeight();
g.setColor(c.getBackground());
g.fillRect(0, 0, w, h);
g.setColor(c.getForeground());
g.drawRect(0, 0, w, h);
String[] lines = LINE_SPLITTER.split(((JToolTip) c).getTipText());
if (lines.length != 0) {
FontMetrics metrics = c.getFontMetrics(c.getFont());
int height = metrics.getHeight();
int y = INSET + metrics.getAscent();
for (String line : lines) {
g.drawString(line, INSET, y);
y += height;
}
}
}
@Override
public void uninstallUI(JComponent c) {
LookAndFeel.uninstallBorder(c);
}
}
And you would use it by calling this method, before your UI is created:
MultiLineToolTipUI.installUI();
Then in your properties files just insert newlines to wrap your tool tips as desired.
Use HTML tooltips and manually break your lines (a simple word tokenizer with a fixed line length should do it). Just make sure your tooltop text starts with "<HTML>". Break lines with "<BR/>" or "<P>". I realize it's not the most clean solution and Java's HTML support is horrible, but it should get things done.
You can subclass JToolTip, which is a Component, and override createToolTip() on the component.
I created a utility class that automatically formats strings to a specific length with <br>
tags. It is based on the MultiLineToolTips class posted by Paul Taylor, but his has a bug in it that skips portions of the string and does not actually limit the string to a specific length.
To use my class, simply invoke the splitToolTip method by writing MultiLineToolTips.splitToolTip(yourString);
or MultiLineToolTips.splitToolTip(yourString, maxLength);
if you want to split it to a specific maximum length. This will create nicely formatted tool tip strings.
import java.util.ArrayList;
import java.util.List;
/** A helper class to split strings into a certain length,
* formatted with html {@literal<br>} tags for multi-line tool tips.
* Based on the MultiLineToolTips class posted by
* <a href="https://stackoverflow.com/users/1480018/paul-taylor">Paul Taylor</a>
* on <a href="https://stackoverflow.com/a/13503677/9567822">Stack Overflow</a>
* @author <a href="https://stackoverflow.com/users/9567822/andrew-lemaitre?tab=profile">Andrew LeMaitre</a>
*/
public final class MultiLineToolTips {
/** Private constructor for utility class. */
private MultiLineToolTips() {
}
/** Default max length of the tool tip when split with {@link #splitToolTip(String)}. */
private static final int DIALOG_TOOLTIP_MAX_SIZE = 75;
/** A function that splits a string into sections of {@value #DIALOG_TOOLTIP_MAX_SIZE} characters or less.
* If you want the lines to be shorter or longer call {@link #splitToolTip(String, int)}.
* @param toolTip The tool tip string to be split
* @return the tool tip string with HTML formatting to break it into sections of the correct length
*/
public static String splitToolTip(final String toolTip) {
return splitToolTip(toolTip, DIALOG_TOOLTIP_MAX_SIZE);
}
/** An overloaded function that splits a tool tip string into sections of a specified length.
* @param toolTip The tool tip string to be split
* @param desiredLength The maximum length of the tool tip per line
* @return The tool tip string with HTML formatting to break it into sections of the correct length
*/
public static String splitToolTip(final String toolTip, final int desiredLength) {
if (toolTip.length() <= desiredLength) {
return toolTip;
}
List<String> parts = new ArrayList<>();
int stringPosition = 0;
while (stringPosition < toolTip.length()) {
if (stringPosition + desiredLength < toolTip.length()) {
String tipSubstring = toolTip.substring(stringPosition, stringPosition + desiredLength);
int lastSpace = tipSubstring.lastIndexOf(' ');
if (lastSpace == -1 || lastSpace == 0) {
parts.add(toolTip.substring(stringPosition, stringPosition + desiredLength));
stringPosition += desiredLength;
} else {
parts.add(toolTip.substring(stringPosition, stringPosition + lastSpace));
stringPosition += lastSpace;
}
} else {
parts.add(toolTip.substring(stringPosition));
break;
}
}
StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder("<html>");
for (int i = 0; i < parts.size() - 1; i++) {
sb.append(parts.get(i) + "<br>");
}
sb.append(parts.get(parts.size() - 1));
sb.append(("</html>"));
return sb.toString();
}
}
This could be improved somewhat, but my approach was a helper function called before setting tooltip that split the tooltip text at provided length, but adjusted to break words on space where possible.
import java.util.ArrayList;
import java.util.List;
/**
*
*/
public class MultiLineTooltips
{
private static int DIALOG_TOOLTIP_MAX_SIZE = 75;
private static final int SPACE_BUFFER = 10;
public static String splitToolTip(String tip)
{
return splitToolTip(tip,DIALOG_TOOLTIP_MAX_SIZE);
}
public static String splitToolTip(String tip,int length)
{
if(tip.length()<=length + SPACE_BUFFER )
{
return tip;
}
List<String> parts = new ArrayList<>();
int maxLength = 0;
String overLong = tip.substring(0, length + SPACE_BUFFER);
int lastSpace = overLong.lastIndexOf(' ');
if(lastSpace >= length)
{
parts.add(tip.substring(0,lastSpace));
maxLength = lastSpace;
}
else
{
parts.add(tip.substring(0,length));
maxLength = length;
}
while(maxLength < tip.length())
{
if(maxLength + length < tip.length())
{
parts.add(tip.substring(maxLength, maxLength + length));
maxLength+=maxLength+length;
}
else
{
parts.add(tip.substring(maxLength));
break;
}
}
StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder("<html>");
for(int i=0;i<parts.size() - 1;i++)
{
sb.append(parts.get(i)+"<br>");
}
sb.append(parts.get(parts.size() - 1));
sb.append(("</html>"));
return sb.toString();
}
}
Use like
jComponent.setToolTipText(MultiLineTooltips.splitToolTip(TOOLTIP));