On 08/02/11 23:25, Peter de Ridder wrote:
Hi,
Using vim do edit binary files isn't always that easy. With
display+=uhex you can make unprintable characters show as hex, but the
printable characters are still shown as normal characters. Using xxd
so convert a file to hex gives a nice view of the file in both hex and
printable characters. But editing is still a bit difficult even with
hex editing helper scripts. e.g. insering or removing data isn't easy
since all the xxd offsets number need to be renumbered.
To make it easier for hex editing in vim I try the split hex editing
in different parts which could be added to vim and be setup with a
command e.g. :hexthis (like :diffthis for diffing). The parts I came
up with are:
- Show all characters (printable or unprintable) as hex.
- Show unprintable characters as a dot.
- Number lines with byte offsets.
- Columnize every x bytes.
- Enter characters as hex.
- Join lines over eol and make eol editable as if it was a character.
- Other features like vsplit and scrollbind are already present.
I know some if these options can be either impossible or to hard to be
reasonable but I put them in the list to be complete.
I started on implementing a few of the parts. I added preliminary
patches for them.
I'm providing the preliminary patches so other people can test them,
tell what is missing, give pointers in to right direction or provide
ideas on further improvements. I'm interested in using these feature
myself maybe others are interested too and maybe these can become part
of the newer versions of vim, when completed.
I'll explain the different parts a bit further:
- Show all characters (printable or unprintable) as hex.
Preliminary patch: hex-displaymode.patch
A per window setting to display all characters as hex, making all
characters 2 display cells wide. This can be used as main hex editing
window. Like the hex data part of xxd. The patch adds window option
'displaymode'='hex'.
- Show unprintable characters as a dot.
Preliminary patch: hex-displaymode.patch
A per window setting to display all unprintable characters as dots,
making all characters 1 display cell wide. This way this can be setup
with scrollbinding to the main hex editing window and have half the
width. Since the main window will have characters of 2 wide and this
window will have characters of 1 wide, so the wrapping and such will
match and scrollbinding can be used. This setting is like the right
printable character side of xxd. The patch adds window option
'displaymode'='dot'.
- Number lines with byte offsets.
Preliminary patch: hex-hexnumber.patch
A setting like 'number' and the recent 'relativenumber' but instead of
line number it shows line byte offsets. The +byte_offset feature
provides the internals for this. Line the first column if xxd. The
patch adds window option 'hexnumber'.
- Columnize every x bytes.
Experimental patch: hex-columnview.patch
Columnize characters in groups of x bytes or multiple groups. And
break a line at x bytes neither by inserting eol or dependant on the
window width. Gives a better for of data in (mostly) the
'displaymode'='hex' window. The patch adds
'columnview'={break},{count},{count},... ('columnize' might be a
better name?)
- Enter characters as hex.
Type only [0-9a-fA-F] to enter data. This could be handled by a script
and doesn't need to be part of the c code base.
- Join lines over eol and make eol editable as if it was a character.
Make the eol act like it as a normal character and let the line breaks
be fully handled by either 'wrap' or 'columnview'. As for now I don't
see any option in vim which does something similar and it seems very
hard to me if not impossible without breaking the core structure. I
could also live without this part since the other parts would be a
good enough improvement already. vim is still a text editor and not a
full featured hex editor.
Patches:
hex-displaymode.patch: Base patch adding the +hex feature and the
'displaymode' window option. This should work on vim7.3 (It is based
on 7.3-112).
hex-hexnumber.patch: Aditional patch to add 'hexnumber' window option.
hex-displaymode.patch needs to be applied.
hex-columnview.patch: Aditional patch adding experimental window
option 'columnview', this is know to break. hex-hexnumber.patch needs
to be applied. I might have started in the wrong direction with this
implementation, so I might need to start over with this one.
Regards,
Peter
IIUC, when 'encoding' is "utf-8" and you are entering characters as hex,
you would have to type E4B880, not 4E00, for the Chinese horizontal-bar
number one (一 U+4E00, one character, three bytes), and F0A08480, not
20100 or 00020100, for the "additional Chinese character" 𠄀 (U+20100,
one character, four bytes)? Similarly for *any* character above U+007F
when 'encoding' is set to "utf-8"? For instance, E9 when 'encoding' is
latin1, but C3A9 when it is utf-8, for the lowercase e-acute, é, U+00E9,
the most frequent accented letter in the French language? But see also
:help i_CTRL-V_digit.
Best regards,
Tony.
--
It is not enough to succeed. Others must fail.
-- Gore Vidal
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