I've been using XEmacs as my primary text editor forever. However, it has some annoying features that have bugged me over the years:

1. Syntax coloring is somewhat limited - not enough unique "things" can be colorized.
2. Certain modes (e.g. python-mode) have a "shift block left/right" feature, but it is not available in all modes.
3. HTML mode is a pain. First, it asks for my email address every time I start a new page, so it can create an annoying template that I have to delete, and secondly the formatting really doesn't work very well.
4. When I edit C/C++ code on my Windows XP machine, and edit the same code later under Linux, the formatting is not the same. For some reason the indentation gets screwed up. (Possibly a version-creep thing between the two machines, but still, it shouldn't get screwed up.)

I've tried many editors over the years as a replacement (vim, cream, NEdit, jed), but none have matched XEmacs, so I've lived with its misfeatures. I had tried jEdit a few times before, but stumbled on two things:

1. I've found no way to assign a shortcut to run an external process like "make". This is an area where XEmacs really shines. After "make" runs, you get a clickable list of errors and can immediately jump to the problem spots. jEdit seems to have no equivalent functionality, though I'd love to hear that I'm wrong on this.
2. Although jEdit is cross-platform, fonts under Linux (xorg-x11) are really limited and ugly for some reason.

So I trudged on with XEmacs ...

The final straw for XEmacs came last week as I was editing some HTML and PHP code for the site, and XEmacs kept splitting the screen to give me a really bizarre error message that I could neither track down nor figure out how to turn off. Editing any HTML/PHP page seemed to do the same thing. Given the other warts, and since I'm getting into an HTML/PHP phase right now, I decided to make the plunge and try to switch to jEdit.

So far I've been pretty happy with jEdit:

• jEdit has functional equivalents for all the important XEmacs features I use (except launching an external "make" command ...), so I have all my usual keyboard shortcuts set up.
• The macro recorder seems far easier to use than XEmacs, and I've written a couple of custom macros already (I'm neither a Java nor Lisp programmer, but Java scripting seems a lot easier to pick up than elisp ever was).
• jEdit has a better syntax highlighting, with what seems about twice the categories of "things" that can be colorized.
• Python mode works "like it should" without weird undocumented settings like XEmacs needs.
• Block shift left/right is an inherent feature that works in all modes.
• I really like that it reloads the files I was working on when I last exited. I hate when I have a set of files that I'm working on, but have to logoff at the end of the day, etc., and lose my place. [Now if only I can get Firefox to do a similar save/restore with multiple tabs, I would be set!]
• I was initially annoyed by the "Open File" dialog, but discovered that you can use the arrow keys to navigate, so the mouse isn't needed.

Things I don't like:

1. There doesn't seem to be a way to set keyboard shortcuts on a per-mode basis (i.e. so you could have different shortcuts when editing HTML vs. Python). XEmacs supports this (although you have to do some elisp editing to make it work).
2. I can't figure out how to run an external compiler, as mentioned already. (Since 95% of my programming these days is in Python, I don't really miss the lack of C/C++ support via running an external "make", but I'd still like to solve this one of these days.)
3. The Linux/xorg-x11 fonts are still uglier than on the Windows side. I can't figure out how to make it use the other TTF fonts on my system.
4. I map a lot of shortcuts as ALT+something, yet jEdit keeps trying to grab the ALT and activate an item on the menubar. Its a weird focus thing, but annoying. It seems like if I'm typing in a window then everything is OK, but if I click outside, then come back, it doesn't refocus correctly until I start typing again. Annoying, but not a fatal flaw.

All in all, I'm very happy with the jEdit experiment. Hopefully I will find answers to a few of the things that are still bugging me about jEdit and will post an update when/if I do.