I'm not sure if many people know about this text-editor?
jEdit was kinda big in 2004, but now, Notepad++ seems to have taken the lead(on Windows) Many of the plugins haven't been updated since 2003 and the overal layout and usage is confusing...
I'm sure jEdit has many nifty features, but I'll be damned if I can find out where to find them and how to use them. Reading that manual is a fulltime job on it's own.
I had to use during my vocational education for XML and XSLT. It had a lot of bugs and didn't work always. I couldn't get to like it, but if I had to test some XSLT I'd give it another shot. I found Notepad++ and I am more than happy with it for what I need.
To your question: Did you take a look at jEdit's plugin list? There are some plugins released 2008 and the latest version was released on 8th August 2008.
I've been using jEdit since 2003ish. I use it on my Ubuntu 8.04 box at home, however it does have a few bugs: sometimes when you click on a button which opens a dialog, such as "Open File", the dialog will be completely blank.
This could be a Java thing, but it seems a strange issue.
Other than that, I'm quite happy with jEdit - it's the best general editor I've found (so far) for Linux (ducks as hordes of Vi and Emacs users light up their flame cannons)
I like the XML Editor plugin: auto-completion when you close XML (including HTML) tags, plus if you specify a DOCTYPE it gives you auto completion.
There is also a handy plugin for visually viewing diffs between two files.
Myeah, I just installed the 4.3pre15(latest) and it does look a bit better.
Super feature is the automatic XML DTD creation you can get from one of the plugins.
Now THAT is awsome, especially for big files
I have used jEdit for a number of years, both on PC and Mac (a bit funky on the Mac).
Currently I use it primarily as a folding editor for a number of on-going documentation notes. I have use the folding at the text indent levels - an easy way to collapse and expand file sections, without any work to set up each section.
The feature I really like are the command shortcut alternatives you can set up, the tool bar icon control, and the the abbreviation expansions. The Plugins I especially favor are the BufferTabs to display rows of file/buffer names, and the Whitespace and TextTools.
I recently loaded the GroovyScriptEngine, in part because of the syntax coloring and control for groovy. I set up 2 seperate jEdit versions, in part to maintain seperate history lists, as I update a few dozen files repeatedly.
I've occasionally wondered about the same thing (what happened to jEdit - though I'm not sure if that was your main question).
Apparently, the main developer, Slava Pestov, left the project in 2006 (to focus on Factor, and his studies), and the jEdit development has never really picked up again after that. Which is a shame. :/ (I haven't actually followed closely, but I guess it's telling that there has not been a major release of jEdit in the last 4 and half years.)
Now, while googling around, I found some info written by Slava himself. It seems at that time he not only gave up jEdit, but developing in Java altogether, after becoming "increasingly frustrated" with the language.
I have been using jEdit for the last five years. And I agree with Mr. Mahan's comment above, jEdit has reached the "just works stage" and does not really need anymore development.
I mainly use it for PHP web development and have tried everything from commercial IDEs (DreamWeaver) to php designer, NetBeans, Eclipse, Apanta and Notepad++. And nothing comes close for customization possibilities. If the plugin does not exist, chances you can whip something together with a BeanShell Macro (assuming you want to dig into Java).
On Windows I use Notepad++ as well, but mainly as a Notepad replacement (I even renamed the notepad.exe)
At the end of the day it comes down to taste. What is important to you and what will make you more productive. A distracting GUI and fluffy features can take you away from what you should be focusing on.
And to boot I have converted a few developers to jEdit along the way.