Jedit, Jext & J: Java-based Editors Compared

An anonymous reader writes "There are times when I want a lean, mean editor and times when I enjoy a good, bloated editor packed with wizards. We compare the programming editors Jext and J to Jedit and offer a revised opinion of the best Java for Linux."

Comments

i am not compelled

[amorico]

Summary:
J: interesting and--Oh look! shiny php object!
Jext: tricky installation, but nothing interesting in the five seconds I spent reviewing it.
jEdit: reviewer liked this one the most, but was biased from the beginning.

Whatever. Why waste the time to even write a review if you are not even going to take the time to go into depth? The reviewer complains about bloated IDEs like eclipse or netbeans and then does not even point out why ANY of the reviewed editors are a compelling choice over an IDE. Eclipse and Netbeans make enterprise deployment, unit testing, and building a lot easier because they were created with that in mind. They only implement editing functions to the extent that they support iterative development cycles and integration with software engineering tools. Do the editors support automatic code copmletion based on classpath and in-scope variables? If I wanted souped up text editor I would use emacs or vi, whiach are FAR better than this j* stuff. An editor is great when you are developing alone, but when you are part of a team of developers, things like CVS integration, code style enforcement, and automation of repetitive build tasks are essential. How do any of these editors fare in that respect? You'll never find out in this review.

-a

Re:i am not compelled

[bwt]

Eclipse and Netbeans make enterprise deployment, unit testing, and building a lot easier because they were created with that in mind.

jEdit has plugins that do just about anything you might want in that area: CVS, jUnit, Ant, java parsing, coding standards, in-process compilation, XML parsing, XSLT transformations. It's "hypersearch" capabilities are the best I've seen.

You can script jEdit in Beanshell or Jython. The "Commando" feature is as amazing as it is hard to decribe (you define XML to present GUI wizards for launching commands).

I would use emacs or vi, whiach are FAR better than this j* stuff.

BS. I'm so tired of hearing how great emacs and vi are. Both SUCK. Both have a completely unacceptable learning curve and are examples of the kinds of of arcane user interfaces that should be *ridiculed*, not advocated. Many people making fun of MS for clicking "Start" to shutdown had to hit shift-ZZ to save their file. And that's as console applications.

Hello, it's time to get with-it and edit text in a GUI. And don't talk to me about "when I telnet into a box I can't use a GUI". Freaking learn the -X option on ssh or better yet, use an editor that supports remote editing. And don't talk to me about gvim.

People that like them have some kind of desparate psychological need to justify the endless hours of torment they spent years ago learning them. To these people I suggest using jEdit in VI key-binding mode (oh, and pocket protectors are no longer in style).

Re:Text editors

[KnightStalker]

Hm. You can draw pretty lines in UML all day long, but at some point the behavior that UML is representing has to get turned into ones and zeros that your processor can execute. Even if you have large libraries of predefined modules, you still will not have any sort of flexibility -- unless you whittle those libraries down to the level of source code.

And I think I'd rather use a text editor to type "for(int i=0; i<10; i++) { ... }" than drag a "Loop" module into my diagram and fill out a dialog box.

Re:Windows has better editors/IDEs

[KDan]

First feature from their site's "Features" section:
Selection margin with line numbers. JCreator gives you the option of viewing line numbers in the selection margin.

When the feature list starts with this, I start to get worried. Looking at the rest I see that was justified. There is no mention of refactoring tools, and though of course I can't really comment since I haven't used JCreator, from the feature list it seems very similar to Gel, which is also free and windows-only.

The idea of an IDE is not just a nice Java-oriented editor. You're right to switch from vi to JCreator and not to Eclipse or NetBeans, cause those are far more than editors. I hate the way Eclipse is so slow and unresponsive compared to my good old KDE apps, but "as-you-write" compilation, the refactoring tools, JUnit tests integration, seamless and easy integration of jars for code-completion even if you don't have their sources, etc... all these make IDE's come out miles ahead of straight editors or "editors+IDE-like-frills".

I'm just waiting for the time when I have a faster computer so that Eclipse runs a bit more smoothly (P3 550 sucks), but I've tried many other methods and proper IDEs are definitely tops.

Daniel

Re:Text editors

[Anonymous Coward]

prove it. seriously... what is better? And why can't that better tool export it's data in text that can be edited, to have the best of all worlds? binary formats are opaque, I still think that's a bad thing in general, unless, of course, you need the increased efficiency of parserless loading.

Re:jEdit is still rough around the edges

[insac]

May I add that they've created an excellent "stand-alone syntax highlighting text editor JavaBean." (jedit-syntax at sourceforge)?

I wanted to add "scripting support" to my application, but I wanted to have syntax highlighting (so it looked more professional :-)

I had to change 5 lines of my code and I had my syntax highlighting editor.

A really useful component and an excellent example of "component-based reuse".

P.S.: maybe it's just a bit off-topic, but since we're developers I guess it's still an useful info.