Events are divided into groups:
- low-level events
- Low-level events represent window-system occurrences or low-level input.
- Examples of low-level events include mouse and key events — both of which result directly from user input. Examples of semantic events include action and item events. A semantic event might be triggered by user input; for example, a button customarily fires an action event when the user clicks it, and a text field fires an action event when the user presses Enter. However, some semantic events aren't triggered by low-level events, at all. For example, a table-model event might be fired when a table model receives new data from a database.
- Low-level events represent window-system occurrences or low-level input.
- semantic events
- Everything else is a SemanticEvent
- You should listen for semantic events rather than low-level events to insure that code is robust and portable. Listening for ActionEvents on buttons, rather than mouse events, allows the button to react properly when the user activates the button via a keyboard alternative or a look-and-feel-specific gesture. When dealing with a compound component such as a ComboBox, you should use Semantic events, as a way of registering listeners on all the look-and-feel-specific components that are used to form the CompoundComponent.
- Everything else is a SemanticEvent
- http://www.complexevents.com/media/articles/ECIS2000.pdf