I really needed a solid text editor for Ubuntu. On Windows I run TextPad which is excellent, after some searching I found jEdit which looks like it contains all the features of TextPad and then some!

I attempted to install the development package for jEdit as such:

$ sudo dpkg -i jedit_4.3pre6_all.deb

Selecting previously deselected package jedit.
(Reading database … 102247 files and directories currently installed.)
Unpacking jedit (from jedit_4.3pre6_all.deb) …
dpkg: error processing jedit_4.3pre6_all.deb (–install):
unable to create `./usr/lib/menu/jedit': No such file or directory
dpkg (subprocess): unable to execute new post-removal script: No such file or directory
dpkg: error while cleaning up:
subprocess post-removal script returned error exit status 2
dpkg-deb: subprocess paste killed by signal (Broken pipe)
Errors were encountered while processing:
jedit_4.3pre6_all.deb

At this point nothing was installed and running 'sudo dpkg -r jedit' did not help matters. After some reading I found that the following did the trick:

"dpkg –remove –force-remove-reinstreq jedit"

 I have since followed this guide on installing jedit using synaptec.