A KeyStroke represents a key action on the keyboard, or equivalent input device. KeyStrokes can correspond to only a press or release of a particular key, just as KEY_PRESSED and KEY_RELEASED KeyEvents do; alternately, they can correspond to typing a specific Java character, just as KEY_TYPED KeyEvents do. In all cases, KeyStrokes can specify modifiers (alt, shift, control, meta, altGraph, or a combination thereof) which must be present during the action for an exact match.
KeyStrokes are used to define high-level (semantic) action events. Instead of trapping every keystroke and throwing away the ones you are not interested in, those keystrokes you care about automatically initiate actions on the Components with which they are registered.
KeyStrokes are immutable, and are intended to be unique. Client code cannot create a KeyStroke; a variant of getKeyStroke
must be used instead. These factory methods allow the KeyStroke implementation to cache and share instances efficiently.
Warning: Serialized objects of this class will not be compatible with future Swing releases. The current serialization support is appropriate for short term storage or RMI between applications running the same version of Swing. As of 1.4, support for long term storage of all JavaBeans™ has been added to the java.beans
package. Please see {@link java.beans.XMLEncoder}.
@see javax.swing.text.Keymap
@see #getKeyStroke
@author Arnaud Weber
@author David Mendenhall