Unicode text editor mined 2000 release 13.1

[mined at towo dot net]

                             ANNOUNCEMENT

                         mined 2000 release 13.1
                              (Oct 2006)

Mined is a powerful text editor with a comprehensive yet concise and 
easy-to-use user interface supporting modern interaction paradigms, 
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 
(like xterm or rxvt).

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.


Following:
* Hints and links
* Major enhancements in this release
* Mined Overview


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More information (with screenshots, feature overview and change log) 
and download are available from the mined web site at
	http://towo.net/mined/


Mined is co-hosted at sourceforge and has a mailing list 
which can be subscribed at
<https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/mined-editor>


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Major enhancements in this release:

Documentation enhancements:
* Revised manual structure, featuring more comprehensive new 
  chapters on
  * Structured editing support
  * Character handling support
  * Language support

Character encoding support enhancements:
* Auto-detection and explicit selection of UTF-16 with 
  and without BOM (big endian and little endian).
* Updated to Unicode 5.0.0 (final, from beta2 in 2000.12).

Character input support enhancements:
* Added support for multiple accented character input.
* Additional accent prefix keys for most frequent accents of all 
  Latin-based languages (macron, breve, dot above, ogonek, caron, stroke).
* Added support for convenient combining character input with accent prefix keys.
* Added support for convenient quotation marks input with accent prefix keys.
* Support for Greek (monotonic and polytonic).
* Support for Cyrillic accented characters.

Interactive enhancements:
* Revised menu structure to be more intuitive.
* Improved menu handling system.

Interoperability enhancements:
* Making use of xterm 216 mode which provides detection of 
  Alt-/Control-modified digits and punctuation keys.
* Improved support for some legacy terminals.

File handling enhancements:
* Consistent setting of file access modes when cloning a file 
  or creating a new file with executable permission.


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Feature 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
* Extensive accented character input support, including 
  multiple accent prefix keys.
* Support for Greek (monotonic and polytonic).
* Support for Cyrillic accented characters.
* 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 and auto-detection 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 
  &ndash; even subsequent or remote &ndash; 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


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Thomas Wolff
mined at towo dot net