chat area without textarea

[MickeyB]

ok, I did some searching, to no avail...may not have worded it right, anyway:

I am building with java 2d and need to place a "text area" to show the output of chat and system messages but I don't want to use a TextArea/TextField.  

My thought was to build a class that creates it's own inmage with a transparent background(or translucent).  The chat data comes from server and is put in a Vector/List/Stack/Collection.  Then the object paints the text to the image in order received showing only the last 10 or so items(you an scroll up and down).

Is is the norm?  What about long lines, how to wrap with strings?

Thanks!

[trembovetski]

This doesn't completely answer your question, but check out this article for some cool effects you can do with swing:
http://java.sun.com/products/jfc/tsc/articles/swing2d/index.html

Also, you may have more luck on Swing or AWT forums.