jEdit vs Femto Emacs
When comparing jEdit vs Femto Emacs, the Slant community recommends jEdit for most people. In the question“What are the best open-source text editors for programming?” jEdit is ranked 34th while Femto Emacs is ranked 37th. The most important reason people chose jEdit is:
JEdit offers syntax highlighting for several languages.
Specs
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Pros
Pro Syntax highlighting
JEdit offers syntax highlighting for several languages.
Pro Plugin support
JEdit has lots of plugins that help you customize the editor to your liking. The plugins are easy to download (once you select a mirror) and take effect right away, without a restart.
Pro Cross-platform
jEdit runs on Linux, OS X and Windows.
Pro Well documented
A long and well written tutorial teaches how to program in femtolisp and write extensions for Femto Emacs.
Pro Highly compatible with Emacs
If you know Emacs, you can start using Femto Emacs immediately.
Pro Very small footprint
The size of the executable file and the femtolisp library add up to only 500 k. The C source code is also small and well documented, so one can easily modify it. You can also use the source code to learn how to program a text editor.
Pro Very fast startup time
For small files, Femto Emacs starts up faster than emacs or vim.
Cons
Con Depends on Java
Because jEdit requires Java to be installed on the OS, it's not suitable for those who don't want Java.
Con No syntax coloring for Latex
The distribution comes with syntax coloring examples for many languages, like Haskell, C, Lisp, Python, etc. However, there is no scheme for Latex. If you need syntax coloring for Latex, you will need to add your own color scheme.
Con Source distribution only
Femto Emacs is distributed only in source form. Therefore, you need to install ncurses, gcc and compile it with make and make install. There is no binary distribution. If you want mouse support, you need to program it in femtolisp or in C. This should not be a problem if you are a programmer, but can become an issue if you don't know Lisp or C. If you want to use femtolisp on Windows, you will need mingw and ncurses.