Re: JDialog not consuming ESC key

you add that listener to the toolkit:
getToolkit().addAWTEventListener(yourListener,
AWTEvent.KEY_EVENT_MASK);

is lower level that usual listeners. With that code you send *all* the
key events to the listener, no matter which component has the focus.
If the dialog is modal,
then this will work:

public void eventDispatched(AWTEvent event) {
               KeyEvent e = (KeyEvent) event;
               if (e.getID() != KeyEvent.KEY_PRESSED)
                    return;
               if (e.getKeyCode() == KeyEvent.VK_ESCAPE) {
                                 //close window
                                 e.consume();
               }
          }