Press and hold a key in a text window, you get one character, then a pause, then a steady stream of characters.

As I said, I can't be sure, but I definitely remember coming across this before, so try a search here and possibly  http://java-gaming.org too.

D.

I solved this problem for a game I made. The trick is to use keyPressed() and keyReleased() to track (in, say, an array of booleans) which of the 5 keys you care about are pressed. Then in draw(), update values based on the tracked states for those keys. This way you can track multiple keys being held down (so you could, say, also do diagonal movement), and you'll have less chunky controls.

void draw(){

  // blah blah blah

 if( keys[0] ){

   // etc...

  }

  // blah blah blah

}