Last Site Update: 03 September 2020 | Stable Version: 5.6.0

 
 
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Here are some of the things jEdit users have said about their favorite editor.


I've used jEdit on an off for a while. Over the last few years I have used (in no particular order) Eclipse, IntelliJ, NetBeans, JBuilder, TogetherJ and emacs for my (mostly Java) development. There are some features I liked about each of these: Netbeans plugins, refactoring in Eclipse and IntelliJ, UML modelling in TogetherJ and customisation and extendibility Netbeans, Eclipse, JBuilder and emacs. However, none of these products had everything that I was looking for.

I recently came back to jEdit (I'm using 4.0pre5) and was impressed with how far it has come. The number of plug-ins that I could easily add to jEdit gave me a great set of features just right for what I wanted to do. For example, at the moment, I am writing code that manipulates bytecode directly using BCEL and the Java Insight plugin is invaluable for checking the classfiles.

Also, for the first time, I have really explored some of the core features more: I have always kept jEdit handy for its hypersearch capability but I am delighted with the folding feature, the dockability of the plugins and how easy it is to create macros.

To sum up the things I like the most about jEdit are: 1. It's faster and smaller that any Java IDE. 2. Its customisation facilities - both macros and plugins - are very easy to use, yet very powerful. 3. There is an excellent set of base features - hypesearch and folding I like in particular. 4. The GUI is logical and polished. 5. There is a significant number very useful plugins that can be easily and seamlessly integrated. And most importantly: The combination of all of these points leads to a product that is greater than the sum of its parts.

While it may be lacking some features that I want, the same is true for all other development tools I have used. The main difference, is that none of the other products have such an excellent foundation on which to build. Both for what it can do for me now, and what I am sure it will grow to in the future, I have decided to make jEdit my main development tool.

Thanks,
Richard


WOW.

Hi.

I just wanted to get that word out of the way first, as I have been saying it over and over to myself for the past half hour. Congratulations to Slava and everyone who worked on the jEdit project. You guys have done it. My search for that ELUSIVE editor that feels just right in every way is over.

I have been raised on Windows, and I thought I had that "ultimate" editor when I found UltraEdit for windows, and I was and am very happy with it in almost every way. It's easy to use, very intuitive, and had (what I thought at the time) an exhaustive feature set. Then I started toying with GNU Emacs, and saw what was possible in terms of a programmer's editor (indentation, folding, code highlighting, etc). Alas, I could never get used to the key bindings, even with my own fully customized .emacs file. I tried in vain for a year to force my self to get used to Emacs, but my weak 'user-friendly' windows side always got the best of me and I was back in the warm and comforting arms of UltraEdit.

That was all fine until recently when I started working at Sun, those guys are not really big fans of MS, vi and Emacs looked even more forbidding on a Solaris machine. Then I got your wonderful jEdit program.

Quite simply, your program is the embodiment of the "Principle of Least Surprise." Everything is as I expect it, and just when I thought I had exhausted jEdit's feature set, I discovered your plug-ins architecture; which is, frankly, brilliant. I always wondered why Java was the language of choice in all my University courses. Your plug-ins architecture is a proof of concept showing off the extensibility and power that is possible with the Java 2 architecture.

Thank you for writing this elegant and quite frankly breath-taking program. Thank you for sharing it with the everyone. Keep up the outstanding work.

Best Regards, Le Wang


I just switched from PC to Mac and was searching for some cool tools I could use, as I found your jEdit package. And I'm really impressed. It's really easy to use and you can configure it use you like. Another thing I really like about it is that you can use it on every platform you like. I'm used Linux as my programming platform and for my university related stuff and Windows for playing games. Now it's really easy to program under every platform that has java support. You don't have to go and search binary packages of your editor of choice for all the platforms, you just need to get the java installer package and you are ready to go on every platform. I'm currently checking all the plugins available. So, keep on going, it's a very good tool!

Nils Crefeld


I came across JEdit a month or so ago, and I have to say I have not used another editor since. This has to be the best editor I've used, and I'm not talking about only GPL ones here. With the addition of plug-ins, JEdit is one hell of an editor. In fact, I think the name JEdit is a little decieving, making it sound as if its a Java IDE (I know its supposed to show that its WRITTEN in Java...), but I have used it for everything from Java to shell scripts to JSP to property files.

Now, there are plenty of editor/IDEs out there, free or otherwise, so what made me pick JEdit? This may seem like a trivial thing, but as a long time emacs user, I was able, in about 5 min, to create emacs-like key bindings, and reduce my learning curve drastically.. the ease of assigning keyboard shortcuts has to be one of the most inventive and useful aspects of this program.

Keep up the great work!

Thanks
Dave Johnson


I just wanted to let you know that I recently downloaded jedit 3.1 and I have to say.. it's come a long, long way since the last time I tried it out. (Over a year ago, maybe longer.)

I've been using Homesite and Textpad 4 for my PHP development, but I've completely switched to jedit and haven't looked back. I even have a co-worker switched it looks like. I have to say.. I've never seen such a complete, well written and near bug free java application before in my life.

And the best feature of all... jedit is the *only* editor that has syntax highlighting for inline scripting done correctly.

Thanks for jedit!

Daniel Beckham


Just thought I'd drop you a note to say thanks for jEdit. I started using it a few months ago when I changed jobs. My current employer thinks "Windows Notepad" has all the editing functions one could ask for -- yes, it's Dibertville (*SIGH*).

Anyway, without a budget, I couldn't get any of my favorite commercial editors, and I'll be darned if I'm going to write enterprise java apps in notepad! So, after browsing around a bit I found jEdit. I started it with limited hopes, but was impressed with the look. I added some plug-ins, and it got even better. I started customizing the environment, and was impressed with how customizable it is - wow! Anyway, it works better than most of the expensive custom editors I've used. Rather than spanning two worlds, I've dropped my CodeWarrior and SemWare editors and use jEdit at home, too.

Thanks for taking the time to write this program, and make it available to the rest of us. I'm very impressed with how fast this operates - Java is a wonderful language, but I've often had problems with the gui apps being a bit sluggish . . . jEdit zips along quite nicely! Anyway, thanks again, I owe you a favor!!!

All the best,
Mike

 
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