jEdit maintains a list of “properties”, which are name/value pairs used to store human-readable strings, user settings, and various other forms of meta-data. During startup, jEdit loads the default set of properties, followed by plugin properties stored in plugin JAR files, finally followed by user properties.
Some properties are used by the plugin API itself. Others are
accessed by the plugin using methods in the
jEdit class. Others are accessed by the
scripts used by plugin packagers [3].
Property files contained in plugin JARs must end with the filename
extension .props, and have a very simple syntax,
which the following example illustrates:
# Lines starting with '#' are ignored.
name=value
another.name=another value
long.property=Long property value, split over \
several lines
escape.property=Newlines and tabs can be inserted \
using the \t and \n escapes
backslash.property=A backslash can be inserted by writing \\.Now we look at a fragment from the
QuickNotepad.props file [4] which contains properties for the QuickNotepad plugin.
The first type of property data is information about the plugin itself;
these are the only properties that must be specified in order for the
plugin to load:
# general plugin information plugin.QuickNotepadPlugin.activate=defer plugin.QuickNotepadPlugin.usePluginHome=true plugin.QuickNotepadPlugin.name=QuickNotepad plugin.QuickNotepadPlugin.author=John Gellene plugin.QuickNotepadPlugin.version=4.5 plugin.QuickNotepadPlugin.docs=QuickNotepad.html # depends on jEdit 4.5 plugin.QuickNotepadPlugin.depend.0=jedit 04.05.99.00 plugin.QuickNotepadPlugin.description=A demo jEdit plugin that provides a notepad dockable. plugin.QuickNotepadPlugin.longdescription=description.html
These properties are each described in detail in the documentation
for the
EditPlugin class and do not require
further discussion here.
Next in the file comes a property that sets the title of the plugin's dockable window. Dockable windows are discussed in detail in the section called “The dockables.xml Window Catalog”.
# dockable window name quicknotepad.title=QuickNotepad
Next, we see menu item labels for the plugin's actions. All of
these but the first are defined in actions.xml file,
and that is because the dockable itself has its own actions. Actions are
discussed further in the section called “The Actions.xml Catalog”.
# action labels # Dockable label quicknotepad.label=QuickNotepad # Additional strings extracted from the plugin java source quicknotepad.choose-file.label=Choose notepad file quicknotepad.save-file.label=Save notepad file quicknotepad.copy-to-buffer.label=Copy notepad to buffer
Next, the plugin's menu is defined. See the section called “The QuickNotepadPlugin Class”.
# application menu items quicknotepad.menu.label=QuickNotepad quicknotepad.menu=quicknotepad - quicknotepad.choose-file \ quicknotepad.save-file quicknotepad.copy-to-buffer
We have created a small toolbar as a component of QuickNotepad, so file names for the button icons follow:
# plugin toolbar buttons quicknotepad.choose-file.icon=Open.png quicknotepad.save-file.icon=Save.png quicknotepad.copy-to-buffer.icon=Edit.png
The menu item labels corresponding to these icons will also serve as tooltip text.
Finally, the properties file set forth the labels and settings used by the option pane:
# Option pane labels options.quicknotepad.label=QuickNotepad options.quicknotepad.file=File: options.quicknotepad.choose-file=Choose options.quicknotepad.choose-file.title=Choose a notepad file options.quicknotepad.choose-font=Font: options.quicknotepad.show-filepath.title=Display notepad file path # Initial default font settings options.quicknotepad.show-filepath=true options.quicknotepad.font=Monospaced options.quicknotepad.fontstyle=0 options.quicknotepad.fontsize=14 # Setting not defined but supplied for completeness options.quicknotepad.filepath=
There is a SideKick for Property files, provided in the JavaSideKick plugin. This gives you a compact and sorted tree view of property files.
In addition to property files ending in .props,
you will find property files with the names like lang_de.properties. Each of these files provides
localized strings for a particular locale. In the example above, it is for the German locale. These files are loaded by jEdit automatically when that locale is in use. They need to have a different filename extension from the other property files so they can be treated differently from
the regular properties.