The jEditLauncher package is a set of lightweight components for running jEdit under the Windows group of operating systems. The package is designed to run on Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows Me, Windows NT (versions 4.0 and greater), Windows 2000 and Windows XP.

While jEdit does not make available a component-type interface, it does contains an “EditServer” that listens on a socket for requests to load scripts written in the BeanShell scripting language. When the server activates, it writes the server port number and a pseudo-random, numeric authorization key to a text file. By default, the file is named server and is located in the settings directory (see the section called “The jEdit Settings Directory”).

The jEditLauncher component locates and reads this file, opens a socket and attempts to connect to the indicated port. If successful, it transmits the appropriate BeanShell script to the server. If unsuccessful, it attempts to start jEdit and repeats the socket transmission once it can obtain the port and key information. The component will abandon the effort to connect roughly twenty seconds after it launches the application.