thanks for the info, I have seen the getter and setter methods in some examples but they never worked because the textarea.setText() line was always in error.
if I make the textarea STATIC it works.
is this ok to do in Java, make a GUI object STATIC or should it have an instance created and that used to address the target GUI element?
having written code for 40 or more years I know naming is important, VERY important, that is WHY TA_xxx is named this, for me TA_ is a TEXTAREA and debug is what its for, to me TA_debug describes exactly what is targeted and what its function is, to me at least.
that is part of my personal format and it works for me.
I am going to put all this into the code now and see if its all working, but I just do not like the idea that the textarea is STATIC.