mined.new

MINED文本文件编缉器

I hereby announce the new release of mined, an easy and safely to use 
text editor which though has many capabilities. It runs under Unix, 
MSDOS, VMS.

The main new features of this release are:
-	Introduction of paragraph reformatting with left and right margin 
	settings.
	(Quick information: ESC j reformats, ESC < and ESC > set left and 
	right margins (^B, ^OL, ^OR in WordStar mode).)
-	Optionally a WordStar-compatible keyboard layout and WordStar 
	compatibility command supplements. However, the key assignment 
	for this mode has not been included in the help file which is 
	already overloaded with keys for some functions. WordStar accustomed 
	typers will probably know what to type.
	(Quick information: option -W in command line or MINED variable.)
-	Optional support of 16-Bit character sets. Mined works well with 
	the Chinese xterm (cxterm).
	(Quick information: option -C in command line or MINED variable.)

Some more new or enhanced features:
-	Screen display was modified to build from the new cursor position 
	(after a search often in the center of the screen) up and down to 
	the upper and lower borders of the screen. This appears to more 
	naturally suggest to the users where they are. For MSDOS, an 
	optional (and default) delay per line was introduced to keep 
	this effect visible because I felt it's more convenient than 
	the effective zero-time screen display which is also possible 
	on PC systems.
-	Support for proportional screen fonts was added. I hoped this would 
	work well with proportional fonts in X-windows terminal windows. 
	Unfortunately, neither "xterm" nor "cmdtool" seems to cope with 
	proportional fonts correctly themselves (they display characters 
	at different positions depending on whether a whole line or a 
	line prefix is output), so what's the use of them?
-	The MSDOS function key sequences were activated in the Unix version 
	as well since some people may use their Unix mined remotely from a 
	PC keyboard. PC terminal support includes video mode changing (see 
	below) as far as it can be performed by escape sequences to 
	the ANSI driver.
-	Most options that could be activated by setting specific 
	environment variables can now be triggered with certain option 
	letters in a single variable, MINED, as well as from the 
	command line.
-	Two options for automatic conversion between different line end 
	conventions on reading the file were introduced:
	-r to ignore CR characters (so strip them at line ends), i.e. to 
	read MSDOS text on Unix machines.
	-R to take CR only for newline, i.e., to read MacIntosh text on 
	MSDOS or Unix machines.
	(Adaptation of Unix line ends when reading on MSDOS machines is 
	performed anyway.)
-	The enter-control-code prefix (^V (WordStar mode: ^P)) was 
	extended to compose characters if the first following key 
	typed in is a character resembling an accent mark ("'`^鴡).
-	A search for identifier at current position function was introduced.
	(Quick information: HOP search (i.e., HOP ESC / , HOP ESC \ , 
	HOP F8 , or HOP ^Q ^F in WordStar mode).)
-	A repeat previous search (one before the last search) function was 
	introduced. (Quick information: HOP search next (i.e., HOP ^N , 
	HOP F9 , or HOP ^L in WordStar mode).)

And especially some effort was taken to improve the MSDOS version:
-	More tolerance for the 640 KB memory restriction was achieved 
	by allocating text line information blocks in groups. The out 
	of memory condition now does no longer cause mined to 
	terminate (and write a panic file) but just terminates the 
	current operation and gives a message.
-	MSDOS mined now detects screen size changes on each keystroke, so 
	it reacts almost immediately, e.g., on font changes performed by 
	the VGAMAX font substitution TSR.
-	Several MSDOS screen mode switching functions were integrated to 
	enable explicit mode change with a command. Part of this 
	function is still in an experimental state due to the problems 
	with interaction of the chaotic multi-dimensional MSDOS mode 
	space, a plethora of mode switching functions in MSDOS, and 
	the functionality of mode substitution software like VGAMAX.
	The new mined functions are basically:
	- ESC L/l	Switch to the next higher/lower line number 
			mode with unchanged column number. Actually 
			the number of lines is first tried to be 
			increased/decreased within the current video 
			mode, if it is at its limit, the next video 
			mode is chosen.
	- ESC M/l	Switch to the mode with next higher/lower 
			total text resolution (lines * columns).
	- Alt-F9 / Ctrl-F9	Switch between highest and lowest / 
			circle through all line number modes within 
			the current basic screen mode.
	Experimental ones are direct mode number setting (HOP ESC M) 
	and some more obscure screen related mode settings (HOP ESC m/L/l).

A few bugs were removed:
-	Display garbage in very small windows (less than 28 columns).
		There may still occur display garbage if the window is 
		narrower than the tab size (8 displayable characters).
-	Display garbage in very long lines.
-	Display and position bug related with tab characters and long lines.
-	Display garbage after substitution that made a line shorter so it 
		would have been completely shifted out of the left 
		display border.
-	Incorrect display after aborted substitution.
-	Aborted substitution although there was enough room on the line.
-	If the environment variable NoCtrlSQ or NoControlSQ is set, also 
	the tty channel soft handshake setting will not be disabled in case 
	this would affect remote connection behaviour. I had discovered that 
	characters were actually lost on a remote (internet) login connection.

Keyboard assignment mofications:
-	The function ESC l has been changed to be invoked by ESC R to 
	make room for the MSDOS screen size switching functions.
-	In order to make room for the WordStar keyboard mode some 
	function assigments have been cloned, e.g. ESC g can now be 
	used in addition to ^G for the goto/hop function.
-	An option to adapt the Backspace and Delete keys to the other 
	convention was added (quick information: -B).