extende > faq eXtenDE initially started out life as an extensible development environment.
The first step is to decide how to best represent Java source code using XML. There are currently two schools of thought on this matter, JavaML and Eric Armstrong's (a development member of eXtenDE) proposal. Both were developed seperately, so they have much different goals, initially. Please see the Mailing List Archive for this lengthy discussion as it is currently unresolved.
The next step, once this decision has been made, is to write an editor, debugger, repository, etc. that can be plugged into a variety of existing IDE systems (Netbeans, jBuilder, jEdit, VisualAge, etc.).