Project Maturity

[vector-man]

Hey there! Someone sent me a link to your project as a suggestion for a hex control I'm needing for my project. From what I've seen, it looks great! Keep up the good work!

I see you mentioned that it's not usable in it's current state. Can it at least work as a hex viewer for a <= 16MB file and add a bunch of highlights to byte ranges (potentially 100s or 1000s)? That's all I'm really looking for at the moment for my project, IPS Peek (also on GitHub.)

Thanks!

Take care,

VM

[Droppers]

Hey :)!

I looked at your project, I assume you are working on a new version? Will it also be a WinForms application? Is it just for visualising the files, and not editing and saving them? Most of the outstanding problems are related to editing.

Features

• It should be able to handle thousands of highlighting ranges just fine. But there is room for optimisation.
• It can also support any file size, since only the visible range on the screen will be loaded into memory.
• Documents can be edited using keyboard controls. CTRL+A, delete, backspace, writing bytes, etc.
• Undo and redo.

Note that it other than the editor itself it wont come with context menus, find and replace dialogs, etc. It could be done, but requires a lot of additional work.

Some of the issues that currently make it not usable (I'm probably missing quite a few minor bugs):

• Saving files is not possible, shouldn't be too hard to implement but I just haven't done it yet.
• Handling files in general, not crashing when a file is readonly for example, instead making the document just readonly.
• Currently only the document (file) can be configured. Things such as colors, the font, etc. cannot be configured.
• It is not distributed as a NuGet package yet.
• Some small rendering bugs.

The problem is that I've tried to work too much on more advanced features. However, I will try to work more on the basic features first and then add more advanced features later on.

[vector-man]

Hey. Yeah, I'm planning on switching from WinForms to Avalonia for IPS Peek and needed an Avalonia hex control.

It only views data (no hex editing.)

The plan was to: refactor, get it running in ReactiveUI + Windows Forms, then get everything over to Avalonia. I actually plan on making my own find dialog, so that shouldn't be a problem.

I'll definitely keep an eye on your project. Thanks!

[Droppers]

Viewing should be fine, the next few weeks I have time to work on the control. Note that it currently doesn't provide any functionality for finding byte sequences, you could just implement it yourself though.

I'll also be working on publishing pre-release versions to NuGet.

Good luck with porting your application to Avalonia!

[Droppers]

@vector-man What is the approximate length of a highlighted sequence (or the min and max)? I can use this information to profile the performance :)!

[Droppers]

With 100k markers it still renders fast :)

[vector-man]

That's great to hear! Thanks for testing.

IPS Peek highlights every difference the patch makes to a file of a maximum of size of 16 MB. So, theoretically, I'd say the maximum highlights could be in the millions, but I'm not sure that would be very common.

[vector-man]

Just wondering: are you still working on this project? It seems really cool. Hope your development continues!

[vector-man]

Hey there. If you need me to pitch in anywhere, just let me know. You can make a list of items that need work and point me in the right direction (verbally) and I'll try to get some features done in my spare time (I can start with your list in here).

Take care!