mined 2000 - Powerful text editor with extensive Unicode and CJK support

Introduction to mined

Mined is a powerful text editor with a comprehensive yet concise and easy-to-use user interface and fast, small-footprint behaviour.

Mined provides both extensive Unicode and CJK support offering many specific features and covering special cases that other editors are not aware of (like auto-detection features and automatic handling of terminal variations, or Han character information). It was the first editor that supported Unicode in a plain-text terminal.
Basically, mined is an editor tailored to reliable and efficient editing of plain text documents and programs, with features and interactive behaviour designed for this purpose.

See Mined Design Principles for some further comments on the approach of making mined a useful editing tool.

See Mined features for a more comprehensive listing of mined features.

Presentation
on the 27th Internationalization and Unicode Conference

Conference Paper
Conference Presentation

Screenshots

Mined with opened pull-down menu and with HTML syntax highlighting.
Mined with opened pop-up menu and with Unicode contents.
Mined with customised line indicators and hidden password.
Mined with separated display of Unicode combining characters to check the exact contents of a file, and with scrolled pull-down menu.
The HTML version of the Mined Manual also contains a number of illustrative screenshots.

Download

Mined Overview

Good interactive features

Intuitive user interface
Logical and consistent concept of navigating and editing text (without ancient line-end handling limitations or insert/append confusion)
Supports various control styles:
Editing with command control, function key control, or menu control
Navigation by cursor keys, control keys, mouse or scrollbar
Concise and comprehensive menus (driven by keyboard or mouse)
"HOP" key paradigm doubles the number of navigation functions that can be most easily reached and remembered by intuitively amplifying the associated function
Immediate adjustment if the window size is changed, in any state of interaction

Versatile character encoding support

Extensive Unicode support, including double-width and combining characters, script highlighting, various methods of character input support (mapped keyboard input methods, mnemonic and numeric input), supporting CJK, Vietnamese, Hebrew, Arabic, and other scripts
Support of bidirectional terminals, Arabic ligature joining
East Asian character set support: handling of major CJK encodings (including GB18030 and full EUC-JP with combining characters)
Support for a large number of 8 bit encodings (with combining characters for Vietnamese, Thai, Arabic, Hebrew)
Support of CJK input methods by enhanced keyboard mapping including multiple choice mappings (handled by a pick list menu); characters in the pick list being sorted by relevance of Unicode ranges
Han character information with description and pronunciation
Auto-detection of text character encoding, edits files with mixed character encoding sections (e.g. mailboxes), transparent handling of UTF-16 encoded files
Auto-detection of UTF-8 / CJK / 8 bit terminal mode and detailed features (like different Unicode width and combining data versions)
Comprehensive and flexible (though standard-conformant) set of mechanisms to specify both text and terminal encodings with useful precedences.
Flexible combination of any text encoding with any terminal encoding.
Encoding support tested with: xterm, mlterm, rxvt, cxterm, kterm, hanterm, kde konsole, linux console

Many useful text editing capabilities

Many text editing features, e.g. paragraph wrapping, auto-indentation and back-tab, smart quotes (with quotation marks style selection and auto-detection) and smart dashes
Search and replacement patterns can have multiple lines
Cross-session paste buffer (copy/paste between multiple - even subsequent or remote - invocations of mined)
Optional Unicode paste buffer mode with implicit conversion
Marker stack for quick return to previous text positions
Multiple paste buffers (emacs-style)
Program editing features, HTML support and syntax highlighting, identifier and function definition search, also across files; structure input support
Text and program layout features; auto-indentation and undent function (back-tab), numbered item justification
Systematic text and file handling safety, avoiding loss of data
Visible indications of special text contents (TAB characters, different line-end types, character codes that cannot be displayed in the current mode)
Full binary transparent editing with visible indications (illegal UTF-8 or CJK, mixed line end types, NUL characters, ...)
Print function that works in all text encodings
Optional password hiding
Optional emacs command mode

Small-footprint operation and portability

Plain text mode (terminal) operation, supporting wide range of terminals
Instant start-up
Runs on many platforms: Unix (Linux/Sun/HP/BSD/Mac and more), DOS (djgpp), Windows (cygwin, Interix)
Makefiles also support legacy systems