Java Swing JTextArea not working

Question

I\'m working on a game. In this part, a new window opens up to show the game instructions. The only problem is that the JTextArea only shows one line of the .txt file, when ther

Answer 1

BufferedReader#readLine only reads the next line (or returns null if there are no more lines to be read)

If you take a closer look at the JavaDoc, you will find that JTextArea inherited read(Reader, Object) from JTextComponent, which will solve (most) of your problems

Something more along the lines of

read = new JTextArea();
try (Reader reader = new BufferedReader(new FileReader("instructions.txt"))) {
    read.read(reader, null);
} catch (IOException exception) {
    exception.printStackTrace();
}
scroll = new JScrollPane(read);
read.setFont(new Font("Comic Sans MS", Font.BOLD, 16)); // change font
read.setEditable(false);
add(read);

might achieve what you're trying to do

Also, you might need to call

read.setLineWrap(true);
read.setWrapStyleWord(true);

to allow automatic wrapping of words if they extend beyond the visible boundaries of the area.

Answer 2

You are reading only one line from a file. Try using this instead to load entire file.

List<String> lines;
try {
    lines = Files.readAllLines();
} catch (IOException ex) {
    ex.printStackTrace();
}

StringBuilder text = new StringBuilder();
for (String line : lines) {
    text.append(line);
}

read = new JTextArea(text.toString());