If you're using JEdit but don't like the limited fonts don't blame jedit, blame java. Here's what to do.

Java looks at the X servers fontpath but on my system (Fedora 7) my fontpath consists the font server.

/etc/X11/xorg.conf:
        FontPath     "unix/:7100"

Java does not use a font server.

The easiest thing to do (and what I did) is just pick a font and copy it to /usr/local/java/lib/fonts/ or maybe /usr/lib/jvm/java-1.6.0-openjdk-1.6.0.0.x86_64/jre/lib/fonts (I had to make the fonts directory).

So setup your font server let's get a bit trickier.

# this adds font paths to your x server
xset +fp /usr/share/fonts/msttcorefonts/
xset +fp ...

# you may have to create the fonts.dir (in the font directory) file via
# mkfontscale
# mkfontdir

# make sure you are really starting a fresh jedit and not an existing jedit server
jedit 
# pick your font. Utilities->Global Options->Text Area

# put your x server back to normal
xset -fp /usr/share/fonts/msttcorefonts/
xset -fp ...