jEdit

Powerful, well-performing low-clutter editor

    by Randy J. Ray

I regularly use 4 or 5 editors, depending on the type of system, type of file being edited, etc. I'm a long-time (X)Emacs user, and keep vi skills fresh. I also use Eclipse and (when given no other options) Notepad and/or TextEdit for PC or Mac.

I started using jEdit a few years ago, and find that it works really, really well. It's very responsive, comes up fairly quickly (for a Java GUI app, when compared to an IDE like Eclipse or ... [More] kitchen-sink like emacs), and has a lot of features. It also has a rich plug-in architecture and a good user-base. You can add plug-ins as you need them, keeping the editor as lightweight (or not) as you need it to be.

Mostly, I use it for XML documents and other files that are structured but are not program code (most programming-related editing is done with Eclipse or emacs). But it has excellent support for a wide range of languages... I just have years of customizations invested in the other editors. Still, it stays in my launcher-menu, whether I'm on Linux, Windows or Mac OSX. One of the few tools I use that that behaves *absolutely* identically on all three platforms. [Less]

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