how to set font weight in Java for Swing components

Question

I want to set different font weights for components on my JFrame dialog. How do I do this?

In the below Java statement

setFont(new Font("Dialog", Font.BOLD, 12));

when I use Font.BOLD it is too bold and when I use Font.Plain it is too plain. I want something in-between.

Answer 1

welle is partially correct. You can use TextAttributes to obtain a font:

Map<TextAttribute, Object> attributes = new HashMap<>();

attributes.put(TextAttribute.FAMILY, Font.DIALOG);
attributes.put(TextAttribute.WEIGHT, TextAttribute.WEIGHT_SEMIBOLD);
attributes.put(TextAttribute.SIZE, 12);

label.setFont(Font.getFont(attributes));

A better approach is to derive your font from the font installed on the Swing component by the look-and-feel:

Font font = label.getFont();

font = font.deriveFont(
    Collections.singletonMap(
        TextAttribute.WEIGHT, TextAttribute.WEIGHT_SEMIBOLD));

label.setFont(font);

That will preserve the font's family and size, which users may have set in their desktop preferences for readability reasons.

Answer 2

maybe i wrong but i think class Font has only Bold ,plain but you can change after that in number

setFont(new Font("Dialog", Font.BOLD, 12));

setFont(new Font("Dialog", Font.plain, 27));

but in class java.awt.font.TextAttribute

you have WEIGHT_BOLD and WEIGHT_SEMIBOLD ...