RE: [ jEdit-users ] Hi, my name is Hessu and I'm jEdit User...

[John G. <jge...@ny...>]

> Hi!
>
> 		I'm total newbie with jEdit, so I decided to begin
> as an user.
> 	Yesterday I downloaded software and sourcecode. I have a couple of
> 	simple questions.
>
> 		There was some confusing when installing jEdit
> (winNT+3 jdk's),
> 	I had to create a shortcut by myself ("java -jar jedit.jar") to make
> 	it work.

On Windows platforms there is a package called jEditLauncher which provides
shortcuts and other utilities, including context menu entries for the
Windows shell.
It is an option in the installation routine.  If you have a file named
"jedit.exe" in the directory where you installed jEdit, you can install
these features from a command line making the jEdit directory your current
directory with "cd" and then entering "jedit /i".


> 	- Can I create a loadable key mappings to simulate other
> editors like
> 	emacs and epsilon? How?!

This feature is not available.

> 	- Can I create new menu constructions forexample for new
> modes I create?
> 	How?!

I don't know what you mean by "modes".  There are "edit modes" in jEdit
which are responsible for syntax highlighting, some text formating features
like tab length and indentation, and available sets of "expand-as-you-type"
abbreviations.  You might want to develop an edit mode for files written in
Esperanto, for example.  The "User's Guide" available in jEdit from the
"Help" descibes edit modes in detail and provides information on how to
write your own custom mode.

Edit modes do not appear on the menu.  The application selects the mode
based upon the extension of the file being opened: "txt" is for text mode,
"cpp" is for C++ mode, and so on.  You can also change the mode for an
opened file manually.

If you write an Esperanto mode, you could assign it to a unique file
extension like "epo", for example.  The contents of the file so named would
still be plain text.

Perhaps you were not refering to something like edit modes. There is a macro
facility in jEdit that is based on a interpreted dialect of Java called
BeanShell.  You should have no trouble using it if you have experience with
C or C++.  Macros that you write and save to disk will be displayed under
the application's "Macros" menu if they are placed in designated
directories.  The "User's Guide" explains all of this.

To extend jEdit's features in more complex ways, the application has a
"plugin" architecture that accepts thrid-party applications confirming to an
API.  Writing a plugin is like writing a small, standalone application in
Java and then adding some code to integrate it into jEdit's architecture.
If you are able to write the application, you will be able to add the plugin
elements without any difficulty. Plugins can add menu items to the
application's menu bar under the "Plugins" category.

An example plugin called "QuickNotepad" is available with jEdit's source
code distribution. There is also a guide and tutorial to writing plugins in
the User's Guide. It is current for version 3.2.2 of jEdit.  To write a
plugin for jEdit 4.0, the development version, you need to make a few
additional changes.  There is an article at the jEdit Community site,
http://community.jedit.org, which explains these changes.

>
> 		I have some basic experience of programming, mostly
> C and I'm
> 	quite new with Java. I interested in doing something
> usefull with jEdit
> 	for my favorite hobbies: genealogy (handling gedcom files, trees,
> 	reports etc) and esperanto (eg. colors showing grammatical items,
> 	prefixes, postfixes and general vocabulary, syllable stress etc).
>
> 	At least jEdit seems to be quite suitable for me personally.
>
>

There are a lot of resources in the User's Guide, at the jEdit project site,
and at jEdit Community to help you get the most out of using jEdit.
Welcome.

John