# jEdit 2.6 User's Guide

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## Chapter 5. Edit Modes

# Installing New Edit Modes

Each jEdit edit mode is actually a file written in XML, the extensible markup language. XML enables programs to load arbitrary data files without having to worry about implementing a parser, doing error checking, etc.

There are two locations where new edit modes can be installed; the user-specific mode directory, and the system-wide mode directory. On Windows 95/98, it doesn't make any difference where modes are installed. On multiuser systems such as Unix or Windows NT, however, each user has their own mode directory, while the system-wide mode directory is shared by all users on the system.

To find out the path names of the two mode directories (which vary from system to system), invoke Utilities>Reload Edit Modes and look for messages like the following in the activity log (Utilities>Activity Log):

    [message] jEdit: Loading edit modes from /usr/local/jedit-3.0final/modes
    [message] jEdit: Loading edit modes from /home/slava/.jedit/modes

jEdit doesn't always load all edit modes on startup; doing so takes a long time! Instead, it loads a "mode cache" that stores the most important details about each edit mode, and then only loads individual edit modes when they are actually required. A side effect of this is that newly installed modes are not immediately available for use; you must first rebuild the cache by invoking Utilities>Reload Edit Modes.

> Tip: The Utilities>Reload Edit Modes command is very helpful when you are writing your own edit modes because it allows you to see changes to a mode definition file take effect without having to restart jEdit.

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