For those who remember or still use it: The previous version of mined was the one I released in September 1995 ("sixth public release").

Highlights

New: UTF-8 Unicode support

• Works with UTF-8 text mode terminals or windows like xterm.
• Auto-detection of Latin-1, UTF-8 or UTF-16 input encoding.
• Commands and input support for display and handling of code values.
• Transparent handling of illegal UTF-8 sequences.
• Can edit UTF-8 text in non-UTF terminals.
• (Can, of course, also edit Latin-1 text in UTF-8 terminals.)

User interface:

• Intuitive, simple way of operation. No modes. Intuitive cursor position handling, no weird limitations (e.g. at line-end) or insert/append confusion.
• "Geometric" control-key layout for basic cursor movements (also known as "WordStar" layout). (Cursor keys can be used as well, of course.)
• Use of a "HOP" key which amplifies any subsequent movement command (and some other commands) in an intuitive sense. This way, a lot of functions can be achieved quickly without remembering as many control or function keys. On a numeric keypad, the middle "5" key is used for this function in order to gain a lot of very quickly-typed navigation commands. (Function similar to WordStar's control-Q)
• Two key commands (starting with escape key) for less frequent functions.
• New: Mouse control available (xterm).
• New: Pull-down menus and a quick pop-up menu available.
• View only and restricted modes.
• Additional 8 bit character input and output support for uncapable terminals (additional to being 8-bit clean, of course). Composition function for accented characters.
• Optional support of mixed 8/16-Bit character sets. Works with the Chinese xterm (cxterm).

Screen interaction:

• Perfect responsiveness to terminal/window size changes. On resizing the window, mined will immediately adjust and update its display - the text cursor position will stay where it was. Resizing also works while prompting for input (e.g. search text). (In the MSDOS version, there is a slight limitation when font substitution TSRs like VGAMAX (recommended!) change the screen size; in this case, mined will react after the next keystroke. Explicit resizing commands are available in the MSDOS version, too).
• MSDOS version works at arbitrary size screens (especially extended text modes like e.g. 132x44). (Of course, the Unix version works at any size anyway.) Mined also respects your colour settings.
• Nice screen output starting from current position and growing to the top and bottom (useful with slow terminal connections for quick visual focus on cursor position). This option can even be enforced by slight output delay as it appears to more naturally suggest to the users where they are.
• Display of filename and modification status in window header line and icon.
• Optional indication of line-end, TAB characters, and long line shift-out.
• Proportional screen font support prepared.
• Wordstar-compatible keyboard layout option (in addition to basic cursor movement which always uses "topographic layout"). This option includes some WordStar compatibility command supplements.
• Optional exchange of function attachments to Backspace and Delete keys.
• Function key sequences for many common terminal types are always activated (vt100, vt100 application mode, Sun, various xterm settings, Linux console, HP and Iris workstation X windows, PC keyboard) - I know termcap is supposed to handle this but often many function keys are not configured; also remote Unix operation from a PC should thus be enabled.
• The MSDOS version has a few screen mode switching functions (e.g. increase/decrease of vertical or total screen size).

Secure text and file handling:

• Consequent checking of any loss of text risk:
  • In any case of file writing or other text saving problem mined will continue the editing session instead of exiting.
  • No external file other than the original source of the text being edited will be overwritten without confirmation by any text or buffer save operation.
  • No accidental quit without prompting for any unsaved changes.
• All file handling errors are reported quoting clear error indications (in contrast to the cryptic messages of all those classic Unix tools...)
• In case of external interrupts, panic handling attempts to save text to a panic file.

Text editing features:

• New: Word/line wrap with left/right margins and first line indentation. (Uses either empty lines or blank/non-blank line ends as paragraph indications.)
• Paste between different (including subsequent) sessions of mined.
• Cut/Copy/Paste/Copy to file/Paste from other session functions with optional append mode.
• New: Insert command for HTML commands.
• New: Multiple text position markers.

Search functions:

• Search/replace with optional interactive confirmation. Extended search functions:
• Search function for identifier at current cursor position.
• New: Search function for matching parenthesis.
• Repeat function for the two previous search operations.
• Startup search expression on command line.
• Startup option for line number positioning.

Other useful features:

• New: Optional memory of last cursor position when a file save command is issued, automatic re-positioning in next editing session.
• Change of file name / working directory association while editing.
• Editing within pipe option (Unix version).
• Suspend function (^Z) with autosave.
• Unix/DOS/Mac Line-end conversions.

Portability:

• Runs on Unix and MSDOS, used to run on VMS which I cannot check any more.
• Should compile on any Unix version - if there are problems, please ask me.

Download

mined98.tar.gz or mined98.zip