HxD: Custom Character Encoding for Text
Posted: 02 Jul 2008 20:22
First Maël, you've got a great little freeware hex editor with HxD. It is the best freeware hex editor I've used and I've looked at many. It's fast, good on resources, and has an excellent user interface. I've followed it for a few years now and it just keeps getting better!
I represent a community of people that use hex editors regularly to assist in modifying classic video games as well as translating classic games from Japanese to all languages. (See http://www.romhacking.net for further reference).
HxD is growing into a popular option for the people of my community, but there is one feature we'd love to see and that's a way to have custom character encoding for the text view (labeled 'Charset' in HxD). The idea would be to be able to view the text in non standard encoding formats other than the provided ASCII, EBCDIC etc..
An external custom table file (simple text) could be used for this with the hex values on the left and corresponding text characters on the right. Example:
00=0
01=1
02=2
.....
1F=A
20=B
21=C
......
65=.
This way, non standard text encoding could be easily viewable and editable in the hex editor just as ASCII can be now.
1F 20 21 21 21 in the hex view would show 'ABCCC' for the equivalent text.
Additional wish list for expansion on this feature:
1. UTF-8 or Unicode should be supported to be able to view text in other languages. Say perhaps Japanese characters in our particular case. I believe HxD already handles Unicode though.
2. Ability to handle multi-byte to multi-char encoding. Example:
AD34=A
AD35=B
........
1A=textstring1
1B=textstring2
1A 1B 1A 1B in hex would read out as 'textstring1textstring2textstring1textstring2' on the text side for instance.
I'd love to discuss this further if you're interested in adding such a feature to your editor! I could recommend several ways to do this. I am also a programmer myself and could assist in the logic if you need it.
I represent a community of people that use hex editors regularly to assist in modifying classic video games as well as translating classic games from Japanese to all languages. (See http://www.romhacking.net for further reference).
HxD is growing into a popular option for the people of my community, but there is one feature we'd love to see and that's a way to have custom character encoding for the text view (labeled 'Charset' in HxD). The idea would be to be able to view the text in non standard encoding formats other than the provided ASCII, EBCDIC etc..
An external custom table file (simple text) could be used for this with the hex values on the left and corresponding text characters on the right. Example:
00=0
01=1
02=2
.....
1F=A
20=B
21=C
......
65=.
This way, non standard text encoding could be easily viewable and editable in the hex editor just as ASCII can be now.
1F 20 21 21 21 in the hex view would show 'ABCCC' for the equivalent text.
Additional wish list for expansion on this feature:
1. UTF-8 or Unicode should be supported to be able to view text in other languages. Say perhaps Japanese characters in our particular case. I believe HxD already handles Unicode though.
2. Ability to handle multi-byte to multi-char encoding. Example:
AD34=A
AD35=B
........
1A=textstring1
1B=textstring2
1A 1B 1A 1B in hex would read out as 'textstring1textstring2textstring1textstring2' on the text side for instance.
I'd love to discuss this further if you're interested in adding such a feature to your editor! I could recommend several ways to do this. I am also a programmer myself and could assist in the logic if you need it.