I happen to be switching text editors myself. I used to use NoteTab Pro (a proprietary Windows editor without syntax highlighting), but decided to switch for a number of reasons, and bumped into jEdit not so long ago.
On the whole, I am very impressed with jEdit, but there are a couple of minuses that I find it extremely hard to live with:
Its slowness: on my laptop with Windows XP SP2, Java 1.5.0_09 and very little free hard drive space left, it takes ages to start up. When switching to another application, it takes a few seconds for the other application to receive full focus. [I've just switched from Java 1.5.0_05 to Java 1.5.0_09, and it seems to be a bit faster now.]
This one really kills me: I cannot switch from jEdit to another application with the ALT+TAB key combination and am forced to use the mouse to switch applications. It works the other way around, though, (quite logically) and the help viewer doesn't have this problem either.
By the way, I was considering XEmacs and Vim as well, but having read your post, I'm not so sure if it's worth the trouble, and if only I could get the ALT+TAB glitch fixed, I think I might stick with jEdit.
My problems with jEdit
I used to use NoteTab Pro (a proprietary Windows editor without syntax highlighting), but decided to switch for a number of reasons, and bumped into jEdit not so long ago.
On the whole, I am very impressed with jEdit, but there are a couple of minuses that I find it extremely hard to live with:
- Its slowness: on my laptop with Windows XP SP2, Java 1.5.0_09 and very little free hard drive space left, it takes ages to start up. When switching to another application, it takes a few seconds for the other application to receive full focus. [I've just switched from Java 1.5.0_05 to Java 1.5.0_09, and it seems to be a bit faster now.]
- This one really kills me: I cannot switch from jEdit to another application with the ALT+TAB key combination and am forced to use the mouse to switch applications. It works the other way around, though, (quite logically) and the help viewer doesn't have this problem either.
By the way, I was considering XEmacs and Vim as well, but having read your post, I'm not so sure if it's worth the trouble, and if only I could get the ALT+TAB glitch fixed, I think I might stick with jEdit.