Want a JDialog to be "modal" but not block other windows

Question

I'm working on a program that traverses a list of objects every pass through. When an object's "time" (i.e. number of passes) is up, it brings up a JDialog to request its next task. The problem is how to deal with multiple objects making this request on a single pass.

If I make the JDialog modal, each object makes its request in turn, which is what I want; but the main program window is unavailable, which I do not want.

If the JDialog is not modal, multiple instances appear, one for each pass, which I do not want; or, if I set it up as a singleton, only one instance appears but only the last object int the list to make the request gets to use it.

Is there a way I can pop up the dialog, leave other windows available to the user, and have the other objects wait their turn to use the dialog?

Answer 1

As noted in comments, the problem can be addressed by altering the modality of the parent Window. On the downside, the "behavior is implementation-dependent."

As an alternative, consider traversing the objects in the background thread of a SwingWorker and adding new candidates to a suitable component, e.g. JList, JTable, or JTabbedPane. Selecting an element form the component would bring up a conventional modal dialog, removing the element on completion. A related example is shown here. Each of the suggested components can be labeled with an icon representing its status.

Answer 2

Solved this by setting the original window's ModalExclusionType to "application" and toggling back to "no exclude" once finished.