Java Swing: ScrollableTooltip vs ContextMenu

Question

I'm working on a (legacy) Java-Swing application and ran into a problem:

The main GUI-component in this application is a Gantt chart, that displays tasks, as rectangles with a label, basically. A right-click on a task opens a context-menu, while hovering over a task with the mouse will show a customized, scrollable JTooltip. This constellation leads to my problem.

If I position the tool-tip too far away from the current mouse position, the tool-tip disappears, before I can move the mouse to one of the scroll-bar handles (horizontal/vertical). If I position the tool-tip too near to the current mouse position, the context menu won't open anymore, because the tool-tip hides the underlying task and the right-click is therefore captured by the tool-tip and not the task.

What I've tried so far:

searched for some kind of delay in ToolTipManager, to control how long the tool-tip is shown, after the mouse leaves the control, which triggered the tool-tip to be shown. As far as I can say, there is no such delay-property.
tried to find the right distance between tool-tip and current mouse position, so that the scroll-bar handles of the tool-tip can be reached and the context-menu is also shown. -> I found some distance, where both works, but often you have to try several times, until one can reach the scroll-bar handles.

So my question is: Is there any way to control when a JToolTip is hidden after the mouse leaves the corresponding component?

Please edit your question to include a [complete example](http://stackoverflow.com/help/mcve) that exhibits the problem you describe. — trashgod, Aug 12 '15 at 15:43

score 1 · Answer 1 · edited May 23 '17 at 12:14

create JWindow, better undecorated JDialog with correct modality (then could be easiest to catch MouseEvents)
only one window with setDefaultCloseOperation-DO_NOTHING_ON_CLOSE or HIDE_ON_CLOSE, by toggling only with setVisible false / true, to reuse this container for whole JVM instance, clear windows content before is setVisible(false) called
put there Swing Timer with (for example) 5-10 seconds for logical autoclosing, by testing SwingTimer.isRunning, if Mouse Scrolling continues and SwingTimer.isRunning returns true then to call SwingTimer.restart

override mouseClicked for whole JVM instance e.g.

if (window.isVisible)
    window.getContentPane.removeAll() 
    window.setVisible(false)
else
    someThingWithRealEventFromMouseListener

there can be used some of better Listener that returns Boolean value instead of using low level instance of MouseListener
you can to (re)dispatch() mouse scrolling (only inside of Bound of the current parent - JFrame, JDialog) to the popup window, by using two - three methods from SwingUtilities

Java Swing: ScrollableTooltip vs ContextMenu

1 Answers1