jEdit on Ubuntu

There is no denying that jEdit is one of the most versatile editors in existence. Okay, maybe you have a different taste, but there is nothing in jEdit that really should not be there and it is also very extensible and customisable. Even though it is written in Java, it loads fast and does not lag.
That’s the promotional talk done, I’ll get to the point now.

jEdit is a cross-platform editor. On Windows it works fine, on Mac OS it does too (I guess) and on Linux it should as well. Getting it installed on Ubuntu might be a hassle, though; it is not in the official repositories. There are 3rd-party repositories for jEdit, though, but I’ve tried those myself and those packages tend to install badly.

You might get it to work from the unofficial repositories, I am not stopping you. But I found that installing jEdit manually (well, it’s semi-automatic, in fact) went very well. So here is what to do:

1. Make sure you have Java installed. I recommend Sun’s version.
   Also make sure that this version of Java is your default.
2. Download the Java-based installer from the jEdit website.
   The latest development version (4.3pre9 at the moment of writing) should be a good choice.
3. Run the installer.
   This should be able from your file manager, but, alternatively, you can run:
   java -jar jedit4.3pre9install.jar
4. At the step that asks for installation locations:
   program: ~/jedit/4.3pre9
   shortcut: ~/bin
   man: ~/jedit/man/man1
   (~ is your home directory, eg: /home/joe)
   Note that the man page for jEdit will not be indexed by the man-pages this way. Don’t worry, you probably won’t need it.
5. Finish the installer.
   You might consider unchecking the API documentation, since you probably won’t need it either.

So now you have jEdit installed on Ubuntu. To see if it works, browse to ~/bin and run the file named jedit. Fine, it should work. You can start using it like this, but it would be great to be able to start jEdit from the applications menu like any other editor. Luckily, you can also do this for individual user accounts.

1. Open your favourite editor. This could be jEdit.
2. Make a new file with the following contents:

   [Desktop Entry]
   Name=jEdit
   Comment=Programmer's text editor
   Exec=/home/username/bin/jedit %F
   Icon=/home/username/jedit/4.3pre9/doc/jedit.png
   Terminal=false
   Type=Application
   Categories=Application;Development;WebDevelopment;
   Encoding=UTF-8
   MimeType=text/html; text/css; text/x-javascript; text/x-python; text/x-perl; application/x-php; text/x-java; text/javascript; text/x-php; application/x-cgi; application/x-javascript; application/x-perl; application/x-python; application/xhtml+xml; text/mathml; text/x-csrc; text/x-chdr; text/x-dtd; text/x-sql; text/xml;

   Replace username with your user name, so Exec and Icon point to the correct location.

3. Name the file jedit.desktop and save it in .local/share/applications (which is a hidden folder in your home directory).
4. Check whether the jEdit icon is now visible in your applications menu. You might have to login again before it shows up.

Well, that’s it. jEdit is now installed. Note that this is not a global installation; because we installed everything in the home directory, only one user can use jEdit. It shouldn’t be hard to install this globally, you’ll need to use different installation directories and be root, though.
I personally don’t think it is necessary to install jEdit globally; it is small and easy to install and it is not an official package, so you never know whether something will break if you install globally. I haven’t tested this method for a global installation, so I won’t post instructions about it either.

jEdit does not look very much like the rest of your software, because it uses Java for its appearance. You can tweak it a little to make it look a bit more native, though:
Launch jEdit. Go to Utilities › Global options and select Appearance. Uncheck all the boxes under Experimental options. Your jEdit windows should now be managed by your current window manager, so that will look better in most cases.