Getting Answers and Reporting Problems

This section deals with how to get answers to questions that the documentation does not address, how you can report problems with jEdit or its plugins, and how best to communicate with the jEdit developer team.

1. Getting answers
Q:. How do I get answers to my questions about jEdit?
Q:. Where can I get interactive help for jEdit?
2. Reporting bugs
Q:. How do I report a bug I have found in jEdit?
Q:. What information should I include in a bug report?
Q:. How do I track the status of a jEdit bug report?
3. Contacting jEdit developers
Q:. How do I contact members of the jEdit developer team?

1. Getting answers

Q:. How do I get answers to my questions about jEdit?
Q:. Where can I get interactive help for jEdit?
Q:.

How do I get answers to my questions about jEdit?

A:.

You should look for answers in the following places:

  • The User's Guide available from the application's Help menu.

  • This FAQ document.

  • The archives of jEdit's mailing lists. Archives for both the jedit-users list and the jedit-devel list are available.

If you cannot find help using those resources, post your question to the jedit-users list. You will have to subscribe to the mailing list in order to post, but it is well worth it, and you can elect to have daily bundles of messages sent to you to keep email traffic down. Many questions are answered on the mailing list within 24 hours. The developers who respond to user questions generally do not send direct replies, so you will need to monitor messages from the mailing list is order to obtain an answer.

Q:.

Where can I get interactive help for jEdit?

A:.

There is an IRC channel, #jedit, available on the irc.openprojects.net server that is dedicated to jEdit support and discussion among developers. You can reach it using any IRC client (including Chatzilla), as well as the IRC plugin for jEdit.

There is almost always someone from the developer team signed on the channel. Just say hello and describe your problem.

2. Reporting bugs

Q:. How do I report a bug I have found in jEdit?
Q:. What information should I include in a bug report?
Q:. How do I track the status of a jEdit bug report?
Q:.

How do I report a bug I have found in jEdit?

A:.

To be as helpful as possible to the jEdit developer team and other users, you should use the bug tracker database that the jEdit project maintains on the SourceForge web site. You do not need to be a SourceForge member to post a bug report.

Before posting a bug report, spend a few moments searching the bug database to see if a similar report has already been made. The bug tracker has a search facility that will let search for bug reports using a variety of criteria. If you find a similar bug report, and you have additional information to contribute, post a comment to the report. If you do not find a similar bug report, submit a new report.

Q:.

What information should I include in a bug report?

A:.

The form in the bug tracker report provides several fields for submitting information. If you are unsure about a particular item, leave it at the default setting provided in the form.

The more important fields are "Category", "Summary" and the "Initial comment". When you write your initial comment describing the bug, you should specify the versions of jEdit, the Java platform and operating system you are using, because bugs often arise that are specific to particular versions. Sometimes the bug arises from the Java runtime environment or even the operating system, and knowing these details helps the developer team design testing and other debugging strategies.

One of the macros installed with jEdit is called Make Bug Report. You will it find under the Misc category of the Macros menu. This macro extracts information regarding your jEdit installation and a stack trace from the last error recorded by jEdit's Activity Log and places it in a new text buffer. In many cases, the information furnished by the macro is all that is necessary to provide a helpful description of a bug. You can simply cut and paste the output of the macro into the "Initial comment" field of the bug report form.

Q:.

How do I track the status of a jEdit bug report?

A:.

If you know the bug report number, go to this web address: http://sourceforge.net/tracker/index.php?func=detail&aid=######&group_id=588&atid=100588, where ###### is the bug report number. If you don't know the bug report number, you can browse and search the bug database to find the problem in which you are interested.

3. Contacting jEdit developers

Q:. How do I contact members of the jEdit developer team?
Q:.

How do I contact members of the jEdit developer team?

A:.

If you want to ask a question, make a feature request or offer other general comments, the easiest way is to join and post a message to the jedit-users mailing list. All developers are members. If you are interested in working on jEdit or writing a plugin for it, use the jedit-devel list. Email addresses for individual developers can be found on the SourceForge web site.