WYSIWYG text editor in Java [closed]

Question

RSyntaxTextArea

I've used this component and it works well. It is LGPL and it is based on javax.swing.text package (javax.swing.text.EditorKit). Since it is a Swing component it can be integrated in your application in a few lines of code :

RSyntaxTextArea textArea = new RSyntaxTextArea();
textArea.setSyntaxEditingStyle(SyntaxConstants.SYNTAX_STYLE_JAVA);
RTextScrollPane sp = new RTextScrollPane(textArea);

JWebEngine

I recommend JWebEngine. It is the only one that I know that passes the ACID1 browser test and the mail-acid test. Most other Java HTML editors are based on the javax.swing.text.html.HTMLDocument and have all the same bugs. The support of CSS is very poor with HTMLDocument. JWebEngine has very good support for viewing HTML with CSS.

• Link to the website. There are also online samples.
• Commercial license
• It is very simple to extend. The vendor is using it for many different things like editor, HTML printing engine, showing custom placeholders, etc. There is no problem with the visibility of classes like with the Sun HTMDocument.
• It based on javax.swing.text.JEditorPane or javax.swing.text.JTextPane and you can use it together with third party tools like the spell checker JOrtho.
• It is pure Java and runs on all platform with Java SE 5 or higher. It also run in non-signed applets.

OpenOffice's Writer

Can be embedded in Java using the OOoBean. The original code runs under Swing but you can make it work under SWT, too, using the AWT/SWT Bridge (example code).

The project is open source (LGPL). The code is OS dependent but there are versions available for all major OSs (Windows, Linux, MacOS and Solaris are supported on the project's site but you can download the source and compile it for others, as well).

Since the underlying product is a full blown office application, it offers all the features you might want (fancy styles, online spell checking in different languages, embedding pictures, flow text around pictures, you name it).

The drawback is that you must have OpenOffice installed; in fact, the editor is not part of Java but it's a remote process which just renders in your Java app's window. This means that start up time is quite noticeable and performance can be sluggish. Also handling is sometimes "odd". It takes some configuration to get rid of additional borders and unwanted document pagination.

Because of this, the editor is not really extendable from Java. You will either have to write code in C++ or using OOo's own built-in language. What you can do is you can register listeners in the document and you have full access to the underlying model for the document. This way, you can hook into the important parts and modify the behavior but this often feels like performing keyhole surgery.

My conclusion: If OO has the features you need, this might be the most simple way to get what you need. If you need a lot of customization, you'll fight an upstream battle against the framework's defaults.

I needed the same thing for our application, did a research and found two more products EKit and Metaphase Editor, based on Charles Bell's HTMLDocumentEditor, both under LGPL license and looking good.

But I did not test them. These days we shall see what we choose.

Simply HTML

• its GPLed
• have no idea how easy it is to extend it
• doesn't support spell checking, but has tables, lists.
• Based on Swing, needs Java 1.4 and optionally Java Help
• I didn't used it as a programmer - just as an end user, it has some quirks - like no multilevel list's or tables that are less than great but is OK.
• Plus is it gives you HTML, so its is easy to embed results of processing into other components.
• Now on SourceForge