User comments
I do like having a small editor that can deal with unicode.
I find it quite neat that you can use the mouse ... although it is a console app.
... really nicely done. In particular the menus and the mouse interaction are very pretty.

Introduction to MinEd

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).

Mined supports full mouse control and menu system in plain-text terminals (and it was the first editor supporting Unicode in xterm).

Mined offers a full set of text and file management features, like data loss prevention (using backup, recovery files, and file locking interoperable with other editors, and file change monitoring), an interactive file chooser, and an interactive file switcher.

Basically, mined is an editor tailored to reliable and efficient editing of plain text documents and programs, with comfortable features and intuitive 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.

See Mined Keyboard and Keypad Functions for a quick guide to keypad assignments and basic keyboard functions.


Presentation

on the 27th Internationalization and Unicode Conference

Screenshots

Download

Feature Overview

Security and safety features

  • Transparent editing of encrypted files, using filters configurable by file type
  • Systematic text and file handling safety, avoiding loss of data
  • Backup features, supporting simple or versioned backup
  • Hard link preservation
  • Optional password hiding

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 or expanding the associated function
  • Interactive file chooser and interactive file switcher
  • Proper handling of window size changes 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
  • Character information from recent Unicode version
  • 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
  • Support of Arabic ligature joining on all terminals
  • East Asian character set support: handling of major CJK encodings (including GB18030 and JIS encodings 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, gnome-terminal, Linux console, cygwin console, mintty, PuTTY

Text editing features

  • Text layout features:
    • Paragraph wrapping, also justifying item lists
    • Auto-indentation and Undent function (smart Backspace)
    • Smart quotes (with quotation marks style selection and auto-detection) and smart dashes
    • Advanced list support (bullet and numbered lists)
  • Search and replacement patterns can have multiple lines
  • Search and replacement patterns can contain substitution references like \1 to matching sub-expressions like \(...\) (can be nested)
  • 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)
  • Optional rectangular copy/paste area
  • Interactive selection highlighting (with mouse or keyboard selection), standard dual-mode Del key behaviour
  • Program editing features, HTML support and syntax highlighting, identifier and function definition search, also across files; structure input support
  • 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 emacs command mode

Small-footprint operation, portability and interworking

  • Plain text mode (terminal) operation
  • Optimized use of terminal features for a wide range of terminals, including large terminal support (2015x2015) of recent xterm and mintty
  • Instant start-up
  • Runs on many platforms (including legacy systems): Linux, Android, Raspberry Pi, Unix (SunOS, BSD, Mac OS X, QNX, GNU Hurd, HP-UX, IBM AIX, Irix, SCO UnixWare, Ultrix, Tru64), DOS (djgpp), Windows (cygwin, Interix, MSYS), OpenVMS, Haiku