Problems w/ formatted text

[Michael Cleary]

I'm trying to format some text which is being placed in a JTextArea in a JScrollpane. I am looping though an ArrayList and pulling out the values I need. I have set the String format as follows:

temp = String.format("%1$-20s %2$4s %3$6s%n", name, qty, price);

When the output appears in the JTextArea it looks kind of like the following:

cappuccino 12oz     1   2.50
cobano           1   2.00
frappe          1   4.00
latte 12oz       1   2.50
 

However, if I copy the output from the JTextArea and paste it here, it looks great - exactly like I want it to.

 
cappuccino 12oz         1   2.50
cobano                  1   2.00
frappe                  1   4.00
latte 12oz              1   2.50
 

Can anyone please tell me why it does not appear correctly in the JTextArea of my GUI?

Thanks,
Mike

[ EJFH: Added "CODE" tags to preserve formatting. ]
[ October 11, 2006: Message edited by: Ernest Friedman-Hill ]

[Darryl Failla]

I don't get the question. These two outputs look exactly the same to me.

[Ernest Friedman-Hill]

The font your JTextArea is using must be a [/i]proportional[/i] font, one in which all the characters aren't the same width. Most fonts are proportional fonts. If you set the font to be a fixed-pitch one ("Dialog", "Courier", etc) then things will meet your implicit expectation that all characters should be the same width.

[Michael Cleary]

Oops - I should have looked at the post after I entered it. The second output, when pasted into this window (i.e. where you type your post), was lined up perfectly.

In any case, I'll try changing the font as suggested and see how it looks.

Thanks

[Ernest Friedman-Hill]

Originally posted by Michael Cleary:
The second output, when pasted into this window (i.e. where you type your post), was lined up perfectly.

That's because in most Web browsers, the textarea widget uses a fixed-pitched font!