As the default text editor shipped with the FreeBSD base system, ee(1) is extremely simple, intuitive, and helpful for out-of-the-box use, especially for newcomers or for quick system edits. However, one of its major limitations compared to editors such as nano is the lack of UTF-8 support.

At present, any Chinese characters or other non-ASCII text cannot be displayed correctly in ee(1). They are rendered as sequences such as “~~ MM MM MM M~ M~” or similar incorrect byte representations. This issue has been discussed in the community for a long time, but I could not find an existing feature request or open discussion in the FreeBSD bug tracker.

I also noticed that editors/microsoft-edit provides a simple, user-friendly editor with full UTF-8 support, and its license is compatible with the FreeBSD project. However, I understand the project currently does not intend to introduce Rust into the base system, so this option may not be feasible.

Given these constraints, I believe it would be valuable for FreeBSD to include at least one simple, UTF-8-capable text editor in the base system, whether by enhancing ee(1) or by adopting an alternative solution. For users working with multilingual environments, modern terminals, or UTF-8 locales, this would significantly improve usability and reduce friction.

Thank you for considering this request.