Display a row of Strings on a JComponent so that the single Strings are selectable/their location getLocation()-able?

In order to be able to display a sentence on a, say, JPanel with a GridLayout(1,0) [i.e., only one line/row] and then be able to draw a syntax tree (or similar) above it, I want to display the sentence as a row of Strings, which each include one word.

The single Strings should then be either selectable (as in a JList), or I should at least be able to get their Location on the JPanel via getLocation().

Up to this point I have tried the following options, and had the following issues: - Single Strings as JLabels: The JLabels are stretched out to fill the JPanel width, re-sizing them to fit the single String they're displaying seems complicated. I would want to be able to do this, however, to make the sentence look like a sentence and not like a badly layed out table. - JList: All the functionality I want, but I'm unaware of an option to re-size the "cells" of a single String (cf. JLabel above). Also, I'm having difficulties restricting display of 开发者_开发百科the JList to a single line/row (cf. another of my questions). - JTextArea: I couldn't get my head round how to get the Location of the single Strings that I had appended to the JTextArea.

I'm aware that drawString() might be an option, but I'm afraid to use it since I don't want to mix AWT and Swing. Also, I would need to calculate the int values for x and y for every single String. And I'm not sure whether I'd be able to get their Locations at all (although I could of course save their ints in a Map or Vector since I have to calculate them anyway).

Thankful for any suggestions! Thanks!

I would use JTextArea and method modelToView()/viewToModel() to get x,y for position in nthe string and position in the string for coordinates x and y.

Also use Utilities class getWordStart() getWordEnd() getRowStart() getRowEnd() methods.

EDIT: As noted by camickr in the comments, setSize() is not an appropriate way to lay out Components (as this is automatically done by the respective LayoutManager, I have removed the respective code from my answer.

Triggered by StanislavL's answer, I have found a solution to do it via JTextField, albeit by using one for each String rather than just one (as suggested by StanislavL).

I can now easily getLocation() for each JTextField. Simple, really!

I'd like to thank StanislavL for his answer, without which I'd never have though about this, and camickr for his comment.