jEdit Features

General

• Combines the best functionality of Unix, Windows and MacOS text editors.
• Runs on any operating system with a Java 2 version 1.3 or higher virtual machine - this includes MacOS X, OS/2, Unix, VMS and Windows.
• Efficient keyboard shortcuts for everything
• Comprehensive online help
• Unlimited undo/redo
• Copy and paste with an unlimited number of clipboards (known as "registers")
• Register contents are saved across editing sessions (4.2)
• "Kill ring" automatically remembers previously deleted text (4.2)
• Rich set of keyboard commands for manipulating entire words, lines and paragraphs at a time
• "Markers" for remembering positions in files to return to later
• Marker locations are saved across editing sessions
• Any number of editor windows may be open, each window may be split into several areas, each area can view a different file. Alternatively, different locations in one file can be viewed in more than one area
• Multiple open windows and split windows are remembered between editing sessions (4.2)
• Rectangular selection
• Multiple selection (sometimes known as "discontinuous" or "additive" selection) for manipulating several chunks of text at once
• Word wrap

Syntax Highlighting

jEdit supports syntax highlighting for more than 130 file types:

Source Code Editing

• Intelligent bracket matching skips quoted literals and comments
• Auto indent
• Commands for shifting the indent left and right
• Commands for commenting out code
• Soft tabs option
• Abbreviations
• Folding, with two fold modes: indent-based, and explicit (where the buffer is parsed for "{{{" and "}}}")

Search and Replace

• Both literal and regular expression search and replace supported
• Multiple file search and replace; search in either the current file, all open files, or all files in a directory
• "HyperSearch" option to show all found matches in a list
• Reverse search supported
• Incremental search supported
• Option to replace occurrences of a regular expression with the return value of a BeanShell script. As far as I know, no other text editor offers comparable functionality!

File Management

• Any number of files can be opened at once
• Supports a large number of character encodings including UTF8 and UTF16
• Automatic detection of several character encodings (4.2)
• Automatic compression and decompression of GZipped (.gz) files
• Any character encoding supported by Java can be used to load and save files
• Multi-threaded I/O system supports pluggable "virtual file systems" for listing directories and loading files:
  • FTP plugin adds support for loading and saving files on FTP servers
  • Archive plugin adds read-only support for loading files from ZIP and TAR archives
• Custom file system browser component used in open and save dialog boxes
• Powerful keyboard navigation in the file system browser (4.2)
• Files can be deleted and renamed, and new directories can be created from the file system browser

Customization

• Syntax highlighting modes are defined in XML files and new ones are very easy to write
• Many editor settings can be set on a global, per-mode, or per-file basis
• Fully customizable keyboard shortcuts
• Fully customizable tool bar and right-click context menu
• Macros to automate complex editing tasks can be written in the BeanShell scripting language
• Macros can be recorded from user actions

Extensibility

• Plugins can turn jEdit into a very advanced XML/HTML editor, or a full-fledged IDE, with compiler, code completion, context-sensitive help, debugging, visual diff, and many language-specific tools tightly integrated with the editor.
• More than 150 plugins are already available that add a variety of features to jEdit.
• The "Plugin manager" feature downloads and installs plugins (and updates) from within jEdit automatically.
• Plugin windows can either be shown as separate, top-level frames, or as "docked windows" inside the jEdit editor window