Event mapping for function keys

I did have the same problem and solved it like this:

I added buttons to the Rich Dialog panel for which I wanted to call events from function keys. For the buttons I added a normal event that handles the normal click of the button. Furthermore I added a ActionListener in the initialize() method of the panel that reacts on function keys and then invoke the click of the button programmatically.

private void initialize(){
    ...

    KeyStroke refresh = KeyStroke.getKeyStroke(KeyEvent.VK_F5, 0);
    this.registerKeyboardAction(new IActionListener(){
        public void actionPerformed(ActionEvent event){
            if(RefreshButton.isEnabled() && RefreshButton.isVisible()){
                RefreshButton.doClick();
            }
        }
    }, refresh, ULCRootPane.WHEN_IN_FOCUSED_WINDOW);
}

In the ActionListener we register a KeyStroke object for a key (in this case F5) as an action. The actionPerformed() method is then invoked when the user presses F5.

Instead of a button you can too use a hyper link and you even can make it invisible. If you do so, then do not forget to adapt the if part in my code.