JEdit

jEdit

Company type	Free software
Industry	Software
Founded	1998
Founder	Slava Pestov
Area served	Cross-platform (BSD, Linux, macOS, Windows)
Products	Text editor software
Website	www.jedit.org

jEdit is a free software text editor distributed under the GPL-2.0-or-later. Developed using Java, it runs on any platform that supports Java, including BSD, Linux, macOS, and Windows.

History

The project began in 1998, created by Slava Pestov. In 2006, Pestov stepped away from the development, handing over maintenance to the free software community.

Features

Supporting syntax highlighting for more than 200 file formats, jEdit allows users to add further formats through XML configurations. It handles UTF-8 encoding as well as numerous other character encodings.

The editor includes sophisticated features such as code and text folding, along with smart text wrapping that respects indentation levels.

Highly adaptable, jEdit enables extension through macros written in languages like BeanShell, Jython, and ECMAScript.

Plug-ins

With a collection exceeding 150 plug-ins, jEdit can be customized extensively to meet various needs—from an enhanced XML/HTML editor to a comprehensive integrated development environment (IDE) equipped with compilers, code completion tools, debuggers, and language-specific utilities.

An integrated plug-in manager simplifies installation processes by handling dependencies, version control, and updates automatically.

Prominent plug-ins include:

• Spell checking powered by Aspell
• Syntax and style validators for multiple programming languages
• Text auto-completion functionality
• Accents plug-in facilitating input of accented characters
• XML plug-in offering editing and validation support for XML, HTML, ECMAScript, and CSS with automatic completion popups

Reception

Overall, jEdit has been well-received by the developer community.

In April 2002, Rob Griffiths from MAC OS X HINTS named it "pick of the week," highlighting features such as reopening files with remembered cursor positions, detection of external file modifications, customizable syntax highlighting schemes, split views, line numbering, convertible tabs, and sidebars. He also praised its comprehensive preferences interface and dynamic search capabilities but mentioned minor limitations like slower line-by-line scrolling and a Java-based user interface lacking full Aqua integration.

Also in April 2002, Daniel Steinberg of O'Reilly Media pointed out that jEdit's appeal to Java programmers largely stems from its community-developed plug-ins. While similar functionality exists in editors such as BBEdit, Emacs, or vi, jEdit offers these features in a more accessible package. Steinberg described it as user-friendly on Mac platforms and positioned it between lightweight text editors and full-scale IDEs like NetBeans.

In 2005, Scott Beatty writing for SitePoint emphasized jEdit's folding capabilities, search-and-replace tools, and support for PHP syntax highlighting. He recommended the PHPParser plug-in for on-the-fly PHP syntax error detection but cautioned that configuring a fully personalized environment may require multiple downloads and can be somewhat time-intensive.

By December 2011, reviewer Rares Aioanei commended jEdit's flexibility, noting its ability to serve both as a straightforward text editor and as an expandable IDE through language- or task-specific plug-ins. Nevertheless, he clarified that jEdit is more streamlined and focused compared to full-featured IDEs like Eclipse or Microsoft Visual Studio, providing practical tools alongside essential IDE functionalities.