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Longer term hexl request


From: john
Subject: Longer term hexl request
Date: Sun, 19 Aug 2001 11:25:34 +0100

Having used GNU Emacs 20.7.1 (i586-pc-linux-gnulibc1, X toolkit)
 of Wed Oct 11 2000 on arrows

This is a plea or suggestion for more functionality in hexl mode:

-- That hexl-mode should have separate text-input mode and hex-input mode.
   In the hex mode one should be able to type the hex numbers directly -
   rather than preceding them with C-M-X (hexl-insert-hex-char)

-- That there should be separate big-endian and little-endian displays:
   The present version is the big-endian version. In the little endian
   variant the page of numbers would be read right to left, while
   the 16 or 32 bit words are still left to right. Thus we get something 
   like:

00000000: 0a6d 6c6b 0a69 6867 0a66 6564 0a63 6261  abc.def.ghi.klm.
00000010:           0a76 7574 0a73 7271 0a70 6f6e  nop.qrs.tuv.

or rearranged to remind the reader at a glance of the differences between 
big and little endian:

0a6d 6c6b 0a69 6867 0a66 6564 0a63 6261  :00000000:  abc.def.ghi.klm.
          0a76 7574 0a73 7271 0a70 6f6e  :00000010:  nop.qrs.tuv.

The VAX used to have a hex dumping command that had to be read right
to left; I thought it quite readable, though initially
surprising. Certainly better than reading 32 bit integers and
reordering the bytes in the mind. Floating point numbers are even
worse when the bytes are reordered.

I ought to do it myself; perhaps when I appreciate this lisp a bit more..

John

John Smith



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