If you want to stay on the bleeding edge, check out some of the plugins that have been recently added to the 'Beta Plugins' section: namely, Velocity Plugin, IRC 1.8, and LaTeX Outline Plugin.

jEdit 4.0pre9 is now available. This will be the last release before 4.0final, so download it and test it as much as possible!!! Also, plugin developers: if your plugin is still incompatible with 4.0, please update it within the next week.

Now that the jEdit 4.0 stable release is just around the corner, time to submit ideas for jEdit 4.1! Write them up below!

jEdit 4.0 is now available for download from the jEdit web site.
Come join #jedit on irc.openprojects.net to chat about this release!

If you have this error try to rename XML.jar to aXML.jar. It solve it on my machine.

Slava says: indeed. The reason is that XML sets a couple of system properties in its plugin start() method, and if it happends to be loaded after SQL, then the SQL startup might fail. The author of this story says he is working on a patch and will send it to the SQL plugin maintainer over the weekend; so this is just a fix you can use in the meantime.

• LineGuides 0.5.3: fixed problems with split views (bugs #529823 and #539117); requires jEdit 4.0pre4 and JDK 1.3
  
  
• TextTools 1.8: added "Columnar Insert" command (Nathan Tenney); requires jEdit 4.0pre1 and JDK 1.3
  
  
• TomcatSwitch 0.5.2: fixed a bug introduced with version 0.5.1 that prevented execution under systems different from Windows; requires jEdit 4.0pre2, Console 3.1, and JDK 1.3; works with Jakarta Tomcat 3.2.x, 3.3.x or 4.x
  
  
• VSSPlugin 0.1.1: fixed class name bug in actions.xml; requires jEdit 4.0final and JDK 1.3

(PS: John, maybe the icon for the 'Installation' topic should be made a little better? )

Recently, two positive reviews of jEdit were posted, one on a web site dedicated to MacOS X, the other on a web site about Linux.
Take a look at this review, and this one.

• IRC 1.8.1: updated by Lionel Fiol; added some new commands (/CLEAR, /ECHO, /JOIN, /NICK, /QUIT, /QUOTE, and /WHOWAS); added new parameters to the /CONNECT command to allow specifying a different server, port, channel, or nick than those set through the option pane; fixed exceptions when using /CONNECT under JDK 1.3; requires jEdit 4.0final and JDK 1.3
  
  
• Lazy8Ledger 1.1: initial Plugin Central release; Lazy8Ledger is a full-featured accounting application implemented as a jEdit plugin; experience in double-entry accounting is necessary to ensure correct use; requires jEdit 4.0pre8, BufferTabs 0.7.6, InfoViewer 1.1, JDK 1.3

Version 1.3.1 of this Java code documentation tool now shows which methods override a method and supports the new "assert" keyword. Several other minor enhancements and bugfixes were also applied, and the documentation was revised.

• FTP 0.3.4: hidden files were not listed, even if "Show Hidden Files" was selected in the file system browser; "Open from FTP Server" and "Save to FTP Server" commands opened the wrong directory on the remote server; the directory cache would sometimes only be invalidated after the file system browser reloaded the directory, resulting in an outdated directory listing; requires jEdit 4.0pre3 and JDK 1.3
  
  
• Lazy8Ledger 1.2: distribution updated to include database drivers previously missing due to a packaging error; requires jEdit 4.0pre8, BufferTabs 0.7.6, InfoViewer 1.1, and JDK 1.4