# jEdit 2.6 User's Guide

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# Chapter 11. Developing Plugins

This chapter overviews jEdit plugin development. A knowledge of Java, Swing, and JDK tools (javac, jar, and so on) is assumed. This chapter is still incomplete and only covers the most frequently used jEdit APIs and services; you will still need to study the source of a few other plugins, and possibly jEdit itself, to write a good plugin. Feel free to subscribe to the jEdit developer list (instructions can be found in the `README.txt` file distributed with jEdit) if you want to discuss plugin development with others.

This section is under construction; more is still to come.

# General Structure of a Plugin

A plugin is a JAR (Java Archive) file that adds to or modifies jEdit's functionality. The JAR file can contain class files, property files (more on that later), or any other file type, such as images, and so on.

jEdit handles the loading of property and class files from JARs automatically, but other file types such as images can be fetched using the standard `Class.getResource()` method.

Plugins can use classes loaded from other plugins; for example, the "EditBus" plugin provides enhanced communication services, which other plugins can use.

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