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Add to SafariWhen comparing jEdit vs Howl, the Slant community recommends Howl for most people. In the question“What are the best programming text editors?” Howl is ranked 21st while jEdit is ranked 63rd. The most important reason people chose Howl is:
You don't need the mouse to use Howl. Everything can be accomplished with commands and shortcuts.
Specs
Question Ranking
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 Keyboard driven
You don't need the mouse to use Howl. Everything can be accomplished with commands and shortcuts.
Pro Fast startup
It's extremely lightweight, making it start up pretty quickly.
Pro Easy to use
Howl is very intuitive and easy to use.
Pro Easy to extend
Plugins (bundles) can be written in Lua or MoonScript.
Pro UI Focused on editting
Non distracted icons, toolbars, pannels, extra spacing, etc.
Pro Language tooling
Has built-in functionality for completion, inline documentation and linting so IDE-like features can be added easily.
Pro Command line palette
Search for your commands in an easy way and see in the list which key-strokes are mapped to which commands
Pro Open source
Howl is an open source project and is actively developed on GitHub(howl-editor/howl). It has a MIT license.
Pro Works on OpenBSD
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 Lack of Lua examples
Although Howl can be extended in both Lua and MoonScript, almost all bundles are written in MoonScript. This means that it is a bit harder to find examples if you'd rather write your bundle in Lua. MoonScript can be compiled to Lua but the code won't be as clean and understandable as if it would've been written in Lua by hand.
