While you can get by only using the features outlined in the previous chapter, you will be much more productive if you learn to harness the full power of jEdit.
When working on a project, it can be convenient to save a list of open files, and re-open those files at a later time. jEdit's saved sessions do exactly that.
Sessions are plain text files with the extension .session, stored in the .jedit/sessions subdirectory of the user's home directory. The session named default.session is loaded on startup, and the list of open files is recorded into it when jEdit exits. The end result is that open files are retained if jEdit is closed and reopened. This "default" session can be disabled in the Editor pane of the Utilities>Global Options.
File>Load Session can be used to load a session while jEdit is running, and File>Save Session saves the list of open files to a session you specify.
A session to load can be specified on the command line using the -session switch. The -nosession switch will instruct jEdit not to load any sessions, and open an Untitled file instead. For example, the following will start jEdit and open all files in the website session (it is not necessary to specify the .session suffix):
$ jedit -session=website |