Hi tsr. Comments below.

>What I want to be able to do is something like:
>- hide unwanted features (from the editor) easily (as to not confuse people that are new to the concept of programming)

You might want to consider looking in to the TextArea project which is actually a sort of sub-project of jEdit. This allows you to use jEdit's text area (and the syntax highlighting engine) and embed it in another application. This is extreme though, since what you want sounds like it'd make a really great plugin for jEdit - so anyone can use it.
You should join the users mailing list and ask for more information there if you're interested.

http://sourceforge.net/mail/?group_id=588

>- indentation and syntax-highlightning

Definitely, look at the help docs that come with jEdit about writing and installing edit modes.

>- code snippets

Absolutely. jEdit has macro capabilities which can do this. There are also abbreviations jEdit has that you can add to, and there are a few plugins which would work well as well. You should check out the SuperAbbrevs, and Templates plugins.


>- wizards (that is, some kind of forms/dialogs that when completed insert a modified code snippet), both the ability to create them but also the ability to define where (in the UI) they will be shown.

Again, this sounds like a perfect plugin opportunity. The closest thing I can think of here would be the console plugin, which has a "Commando" feature that has a UI xml format that you can use to create forms. Then you can execute java code (in the form of beanshell) based on those form values. Other than that you would have to create your own wizards.

>- create a wml-reference

Please elaborate.

>- plugin in a few wml-tools (that are currently written in python) that can be launched and generate reports back to jedit

Not sure about this one, you'll have to look at some of the plugins out there for jEdit that deal with python. There is a jython interpreter plugin, but I've never used it so I'm not sure what it's capabilities are.

>- launch the main application (that is BfW), to easily test changes

This would depend on how you can launch the application. If it can be launched from command line then there definitely won't be a problem. You can use the console plugin to run commands from your plugin, or from a macro.

>- when the cursor waits a list of possible strings to write at the current location are displayed.

Yes. jEdit has a completion popup which I know has had some work done on it recently. If you write your own plugin for this application, then you should be able to use the completion popup. Again, you should join the users mailing list to get more information about this.

>I think that's it. So is this possible to accomplish with jedit as a foundation and an unspecified amount of hours? (I mean without forking the projekt, 'just' writing a plugin)

Indeed, but I think you need to get to know jEdit a lot better first. This little text editor has a lot of power and features.

I hope that helps.

Cheers and good luck! This sounds like a really fun plugin, I can't wait to see it.


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