Rotate a Swing JLabel

I got it to work now with a little help of a coworker. Basically I now have a field that indicates whether to swap height/width which is only active for the time when the original JLabel does its painting.

private boolean needsRotate;

@Override
public Dimension getSize() {
  if (!needsRotate) {
    return super.getSize();
  }

  Dimension size = super.getSize();

  switch (getDirection()) {
  case VERTICAL_DOWN:
  case VERTICAL_UP:
      return new Dimension(size.height, size.width);
  default:
    return super.getSize();
  }
}

@Override
public int getHeight() {
  return getSize().height;
}

@Override
public int getWidth() {
  return getSize().width;
}

@Override
protected void paintComponent(Graphics g) {
  Graphics2D gr = (Graphics2D) g.create();

  switch (getDirection()) {
  case VERTICAL_UP:
    gr.translate(0, getSize().getHeight());
    gr.transform(AffineTransform.getQuadrantRotateInstance(-1));
    break;
  case VERTICAL_DOWN:
    gr.transform(AffineTransform.getQuadrantRotateInstance(1));
    gr.translate(0, -getSize().getWidth());
    break;
  default:
  }

  needsRotate = true;
  super.paintComponent(gr);
  needsRotate = false;
}

I don't know if it is relevant by now, But while searching for the same thing, i found a very good implementation in the web, http://macdevcenter.com/pub/a/mac/2002/03/22/vertical_text.html

Check it out, it is an implementation over the TabbedPane with vertical text, See if it suites you purposes.

I've had a play with this, it wasn't working very well initially because the label bounds were exactly square and caused components to the right of the label to shift and become obscured. But I then realised that it was because I am using JGoodies FormLayout. If you use this layout manager, make sure you set the column size to "preferred" not "default". HTH.