jEdit IDE HowTo

jEdit Homepage

http://www.jedit.org/

Wikipedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JEdit

jEdit is a mature programmer's text editor with hundreds (counting the time developing plugins) of person-years of development behind it.

In less than no time it can be configured into an IDE for almost any language. For this HowTo we will use the computer algebra system FriCAS. Hence we assume you have fricas installed and you are using some Lin(ux) or Windows 10/WSL. The editor jEdit can be installed by apt/deb (used below) or by a method described on the jEdit Homepage.

Install jEdit

$ sudo apt install jedit 

$ apt list jedit 
Listing... Done
jedit/bionic,bionic,now 5.5.0+dfsg-1 all [installed]

$ jedit -version
jEdit 5.5.0
$ jedit -usage

Start

jEdit

$ jedit &

Install Plugins

Mark

[x] the plugins in the Plugin Manager.

Mandatory

• Console
• ContextMenu
• ProjectViewer
• Templates
• TextFilter
• GnuRegexp

Recommended/Optional

• BufferList
• CharacterMap
• Code2HTML
• ImageViewer
• InfoViewer
• JDiffPlugin
• MarkdownPlugin
• SpellCheck

Check the appearance

Now you should see some new (docked) windows, BufferList for instance.

Click

on BufferList in the right docking area.

It will expand.

Same for the Console.

Enter

some commands, and check if ~/.jedit is available.

Warning

This is crucial for the further installation.

Install an Edit Mode

Copy the mode/spad.xml file to ~/.jedit/modes/ (see below) and add :

<MODE NAME="spad" FILE="spad.xml" FILE_NAME_GLOB="*.{spad,input}" />

to the file ~/.jedit/modes/catalog. The code below will just perform these steps.

$ cp -v spad.xml ~/.jedit/modes/

$ export jcat_tmp=~/.jedit/modes/catalog
$ cat $jcat_tmp add_spad_to_catalog.txt > $jcat_tmp

NOTE

Now retart jEdit, i.e. close and reopen (jedit &).

Open a new file

Menu

File -> New In Mode

Find spad (hopefully).

Syntax highlighting: Enter some keywords.

The color scheme can be adjusted of course.

Configure the Console

Plugin -> Console -> compile & run

Configure the Context Menu

As above, configure the context menu.

Press the [+] button.

Look for Run current buffer ...

Repeat the above steps in order to add Compile current buffer ...

Now the menu item spad (or whatever label you have given) should appear.

Installing the Templates

First, copy the templates to the ~/.jedit/templates folder :

$ cp -v templates/spad_* ~/.jedit/templates/
'templates/spad_category.vm' -> '/home/kfp/.jedit/templates/spad_category.vm'
'templates/spad_domain.vm' -> '/home/kfp/.jedit/templates/spad_domain.vm'
'templates/spad_package.vm' -> '/home/kfp/.jedit/templates/spad_package.vm'
'templates/spad_unittest.vm' -> '/home/kfp/.jedit/templates/spad_unittest.vm'

Plugins -> Templates -> Template Tree

Dock the floating template tree window to the left docking area.

Choose refresh templates, and you will see the installed templates.

Install the Macros

In this example only one macro will be installed (lookup FriCAS API). :

$ mkdir ~/.jedit/macros/FriCAS
$ cp -v  macros/fricas_api.bsh ~/.jedit/macros/FriCAS 
'macros/fricas_api.bsh' -> '/home/kfp/.jedit/macros/FriCAS/fricas_api.bsh'

Choose ``Macros -> Rescan Macros`` and you should find the folder ``FriCAS`` containing the macro files (bean shell, .bsh)
``fricas_api``:

Add it to the contex menu spad ([+] button)

Add a separator for convenience,

find the Macros menu entry,

and look for fricas_api.

Now press OK.

We want to use it. Mouse-Select a FriCAS Type (e.g. Integer), and :

Menu: spad -> fricas_api 

should display (in Firefox, otherwise edit the script) the corresponding FriCAS API webpage.

Finally, customize jEdit to your needs, e.g. by arranging the dockable windows and so on.