Sending JTextArea Component to the Printer

Question

I have been working for 12 hours trying to get a simple jtextarea component's contents to be sent to the printer. This is insane. I looked over JavaDocs as was suggested in a previous code but frankly that code doesn't work and reads errors. I'm incredibly frustrated because it was pretty simple (~8 lines of code) to print the contents of a JTable but for some reason printing the contents of the jtextarea is totally different and much more complicated involving multiple classes and in some examples over 100 lines of code. I don't understand why the process of simply printing a Java component would be so convoluted.

Can anyone please tell me why the following code reads the error "Add argument to match print(Graphics)" and how to fix it so that I can send the textarea component to the printer and move on with my life.

JButton btnNewButton_7 = new JButton("Print");
    btnNewButton_7.addActionListener(new ActionListener() {
    @Override
        public void actionPerformed(ActionEvent arg0) {  

        try{
            boolean complete = textArea_2.print();
            //The above line reads the error "Add argument to match print(Graphics)"
            if(complete){
                JOptionPane.showMessageDialog(null,  "Printjob Finished", "Report",
                        JOptionPane.INFORMATION_MESSAGE);
            }else{
                JOptionPane.showMessageDialog(null, "Printing", "Printer", JOptionPane.ERROR_MESSAGE);
                }
            }catch(PrinterException e){JOptionPane.showMessageDialog(null, e);
            }
        }

    });

Answer 1

You might want to take a look at StandardPrint. You can get rid of the lines that reference WindowUtilities

From that class:

    JFrame jf = new JFrame("StandardPrint Test");
    final JTextArea area = new JTextArea();
    area.append("hello\n");
    for (int i = 0; i < 50; i++) {
        area.append("\n");
    }
    area.append("world\n");
    JScrollPane sp = new JScrollPane(area);
    jf.add(sp);
    JMenuBar bar = new JMenuBar();
    JMenu printMenu = new JMenu("Print");
    JMenuItem print = new JMenuItem("Print");
    printMenu.add(print);
    ActionListener al = new ActionListener() {
        public void actionPerformed(ActionEvent ae) {
            StandardPrint sp = new StandardPrint(area);
            sp.setTitle("Hello World");
            sp.setPrintPageNumber(true);
            sp.setPageNumberVAlignment(BOTTOM);
            sp.setPageNumberHAlignment(CENTER);
            System.out.println(sp.getNumberOfPages());
            Image im1 = preview(300,300, sp, sp.getPageFormat(0), 0);
            Image im2 = preview(300,300, sp, sp.getPageFormat(1), 1);
            JLabel l = new JLabel(new ImageIcon(im1));
            JOptionPane.showMessageDialog(null, l);
            l = new JLabel(new ImageIcon(im2));
            JOptionPane.showMessageDialog(null, l);
        }
    };
    print.addActionListener(al);
    jf.setJMenuBar(bar);
    bar.add(fm);
    bar.add(printMenu);
    jf.setBounds(100,100,400,400);
    jf.setDefaultCloseOperation(JFrame.EXIT_ON_CLOSE);
    jf.setVisible(true);
}