jEdit Editor's Review

jEdit is a fully featured text editor which was written in Java.

I am impressed by the syntax highlight engine that has been implemented into this program. It can recognize more that 130 file types. Because of this reason this application is called: "the programmer's text editor" by its producers.

The source code editing engine is simply remarkable and the syntax highlight can recognize also a lot of functions that are typical for all kind of programming languages. The fact that is a Java based program means portability and this is a good thing if you are programming on other platforms. On the other hand, it has slow startups because of the Java engine.

The keyboard shortcuts are implemented very well. I could complete most of the text editing jobs without the need of learning the shortcuts because they are common for most of the text editors.

Another nice thing is the support for unlimited clipboards. You won't have to limit yourself with a single clipboard especially when you have to paste many advanced structures.

The interface is quite well designed and it's pretty ergonomic. The only thing that I really miss is a tabbed interface because the drop-down menu with all the opened documents isn't that inspired.

The 'Search and Replace' engine is one of the best that has been implemented into a text editor. The functionality is simply remarkable.

Pluses: is a full featured text editor, it has a wide support for syntax highlight for more that 130 file types.

Drawbacks / flaws: it has a very slow startup speed because it runs into a Java Virtual Machine.

In conclusion: you can use this tool in order to complete your every day text editing job. You can also try some other Open Source alternatives such as Carbon Emacs or Smultron, or a commercial solution referred as 'the missing text editor on Mac OS X', TextMate.

version reviewed: 4.0.1