jEdit isn't an IDE, it's a text editor. You can use it to edit your Java files, but you need something else in order to compile them. Does your book ask you to install jEdit, and use it for compiling? If so, please let me know which book it is, I'd like to take a look at it.

However, to answer your question. jEdit doesn't come with this ability out of the box, you will need to install some plugins to do it.

You may want to take a look at the JCompiler Plugin.

In my honest opinion though, if you want to learn Java truthfully, you should probably start with the command line tools, because you'll learn more about how java links classes together through the classpath, and how to package things properly that way.

You can still use jEdit to edit your files, but use the "javac" command line to compile your source files.

You can do this all from within jEdit if you install the ConsolePlugin, and install the Sun JDK.

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