Java SE (Java Platform, Standard Edition)

Hello,

What is the best way to ensure that a component gets the focus with code. I have tried requestFocus and requestFocusInWindow and none of them seems to do there work. The frame containing the components that should get the focus is displayed, the component is focusable so that is not the problem. What I found out is that if the component is deep in a nesting of panes (where the top pane is in the frame) is that calling requestFocus or requestFocusInWindow does not give the component where this focus is called on the focus but either the pane that contains it, one of the parent panes of this pane or one of the components in these panes, in almost all cases the component requesting the focus does not get the focus at all. I always have to write a work around in defining a focus listener for all these panes that transfer the focus back to the component that requested the focus originally, I can't believe that this is the way to ensure that a component has the focus via code. I have searched for documentation but found nothing on what requestFocus(inWindow) is actually dooing (a lot about focus traversibility but I don't want to control this, just make sure that a component gets the focus).
Again I'm pretty sure that the toplevel window is activated and that the component that requested the focus is focusable (I had created a derived version of the DefaultFocusManager that showed who has focus). Personally I think (and I'm not alone if you do a search in this forum on focus management) that there is either a big problem in the documentation of focus management or that it is still not possible to even try to set the focus on a component in a easy way.

Marc