jEdit 4.2pre9 is now available. I expect to have a couple more pre-releases, then 4.2final -- so send in your bug reports, and come by #jedit on irc.FreeNode.net to say hi.

There have been many plugins submitted to this site, and even a few only mentioned on the mailing lists, that have never been released on Plugin Central. Some are hacked versions of existing plugins, some are completely new. We'd like to encourage all of you to release your plugins on Plugin Central so they are more available to the community. Installing and updating plugins through the plugin manager is just plain easier than downloading them here.

We'd also like to see your improvements make it back into the cvs repository. Slava and Mike will be happy to add anyone to the project who wants to work on a plugin.

If you're hacking an unmaintained plugin (see Plugin Maintainers), you can take it over, or just add your improvements and do a single release. If you're hacking a maintained plugin, talk to the current maintainer. They're usually happy to accept contributions.

For the next batch, can plugin developers please use the new Plugin Central Submission tracker. You can only post there with a valid SourceForge user account.

One artifact should be filed per plugin per version. Once you file an artifact, me and Ollie will decide who will package it for the next batch, and if we have issues with the building we will add comments to the artifact.

When the plugin is released as part of a batch, the artifact will be closed.

Depending on your location, it might be 2004 already; others will have to wait a few hours. Its hard to believe its 2004 already, and that jEdit is five and a half years old

jEdit 4.2pre8 is now available. This is a bug fix release. It also includes BeanShell 2.0b1, and 5 new syntax highlighting modes.

So we're now using drupal. Users, stories and links have been moved over. So many downloads were broken that we're just going to start from scratch with those. Everyone should submit useful files to the new downloads section. You can still get files from the old version of the site.

Some differences in drupal: You have a menu whose title is your user name. This menu lets you do lots of different things. In particular, it has a 'Create content' submenu where you can submit files, stories, links, polls or post in the forums.

Also important is the 'view submissions' item.

• ConfigurableFoldHandler 0.6.1: updated to use new plugin API; performance improvements; uses java.util.regex if available (Java 1.4): this supports more regex syntax than gnu.regexp and allows folding on strings where one is a substring of another such as Function, End Function; better error reporting if invalid strings are entered; suggested default strings for some modes; fix for bug and documentation error in version 0.6 (never released); requires jEdit 4.2pre1 and JDK 1.3
  
  
• CTPlugin 0.3: miscellaneous bug fixes; requires jEdit 4.1final and JDK 1.3
  

jEdit 4.2pre7 is now available for your bug-seeking pleasure. This release adds several new syntax highlighting modes and fixes a large number of bugs.

The What's new in jEdit 4.2 document has been updated to include user-visible changes. If you're still using 4.1, read this to find out what you're missing

I've found a replacement for PostNuke called Drupal which is vastly superior. It may take a few weeks to get everything ported over, but the old version will remain until the new version is fully ready to go. You can check out the new version here.

You can vote for jEdit as the editor of the year at LinuxQuestions.

A native JDK 1.4.2 for FreeBSD has been released. Right now it is only available in source form, so you'll have to compile it from the ports collection yourself. It seems to start faster than the native JDK 1.4.1; I'll have to wait and see to be able to say if it's any more stable (the native 1.4.1p3 and 1.4.1p4 were a bit buggy.)

All in all the code was a real pleasure to work with and the resulting library dropped right into my project. My project is also GPL'd so if anyone would like to take a look at the resulting code it can be found 3 comments

• BufferList 0.10: updated to jEdit 4.2 API; added open buffer and unsaved buffer counts; requires jEdit 4.2pre5 and JDK 1.3
  
  
• ErrorList 1.3.1: bug fix release; requires jEdit 4.2pre6 and JDK 1.3
  
  
• FTP 0.7.1: updated to SSHTools 0.2.6 beta; bug fixes; requires jEdit 4.2pre6, JakartaCommons 0.3, and JDK 1.3
  
  
• HeadlinePlugin 1.1.1: implemented the deferred loading API for faster jEdit startup times; removed the "Hide Description" option which was obsolete since 1.1; added new actions to move to the next/previous story within a feed; you can now do everything via the keyboard; requires jEdit 4.2pre1, InfoViewer 1.0, and JDK 1.4

jEdit 4.2pre6 is now available. While this is mostly a bug fix release, it has a few nice new features too, like C+b that completes from all visible buffers, and auto-detection of a buffer's encoding if an XML encoding processing instruction is present. A full changelog is available.

According to this article jEdit is included in Sun's Java Desktop System (or at least in the demo version). Which is actually a reworked and rebadged SuSE Linux distribution.

I've been working on a couple new themes for the site. I made the Slashdot theme for practice, but I think it came out pretty well. The Miller theme doesn't really do justice to the design provided by Joshua Miller, but it's not bad. I'll work on refining it some more when I get time.

• BufferList 0.9: added tooltips to the tree view; added an option to fully expand the tree by default; requires jEdit 4.0final and JDK 1.3
  
  
• Dict 0.4: updated to 4.2 API; upgraded menus; upgraded options pane; upgraded the DictPlugin menu; requires jEdit 4.2pre1 and JDK 1.3
  
  
• FTP 0.7: improved SFTP support thanks to SSHTools 0.2.5; improved FTP thanks to various bug fixes; requires jEdit 4.2pre3, JakartaCommons 0.3, and JDK 1.3
  
  
• IRC 2.0: new features like DCC File Transfer and CTCP added, as well as support for Bots written as jEdit plugins; you can also have the time printed in front of each message on a channel; requires jEdit 4.1pre5 and JDK 1.3

Because downloads need to be written by the web user, and sourceforge is a pain in the ass, the downloadable files were world writable. Some $%#!@ thought it would be cute do go around deleting other peoples' files.