Re: [ jEdit-users ] which editor?

[Anthony R. <an...@gm...>]

Hi Gene,

> I've been a jEdit user for quite a while now.  I used jEdit for Java dev
> for a couple of years.  But, eventually the tide took me over and I
> switched to IDEA.  I'm still not happy.
> ...
> For example, Incremental Search in jEdit - Awesome!  Incremental Search
> in IDEA (v4.5) sucks - don't update find again, so there's no way to
> repeat the search.
>
> Is there a better IDE for jEdit users?  Is there a set of plug-ins now
> that will work well (in Linux) and will allow me to work solely that
> way?  Is Eclipse the answer?

I'd say no. Eclipse has the same issues as IDEA by the sounds of it. I
have to use Eclipse at work as the build process is tied into it, and
for most Java tasks it is great - superb refactoring, debugging,
compile errors as you type, reference searching, code tracking, CVS
integration, JUnit integration, JBoss integration ....

However, as far as powerful editing goes, Eclipse also sucks. Crap
editing power - same incremental search issues as IDEA, no block
editing, no scriptability (certainly nothing like as powerful as
jEdits beanshell macros), no middle-click quick paste. Not even drag
and drop for christ sake!! It also ties you into it's build process by
default - things don't go as smoothly if you try to break out of this
process. And it is hard to edit files which aren't in one of your
current projects.

So I tend to have both open, and copy and paste into jEdit for power
editing, and back again once I've finished.

> I have a hard time believing that developers don't want powerful
> editing.  If none of the front-runner ide's can excel in the essentials,

In my experience, they're not that bothered. I guess it's a case of
jEdit's power spoiling us for other more basic editors.

> perhaps it is time for us to join together and make jEdit contender
> IDE.  (I just stepped out of my knowledge confort zone.)

There seem to be plugins out there for almost all of the things that
Eclipse can do, but the nature of the development effort on jEdit
plugins is that they are almost all individually developed by single
(or small groups of) developers in their spare time, on features that
they need at the time. For my own part, I have developed three
plugins, none of which I have time or necessity to develop any more,
and so they have sat stagnant for 7 months or so.

IDE's like Eclipse have a huge amount of resource poured into them by
the big guns like IBM - jEdit just can't compete in terms of IDE
functionality on a purely volunteer basis. It needs someone with the
time to pull a subset of the better plugins together, and make them
more tightly integrated, and easier to configure (usable with no
configuration would be the ideal).

I can't see that I'll be using anything other than the two in parallel
for the foreseeable future...

--
Ant...