HxD Dex/Disk Editor

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Cornflower
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HxD Dex/Disk Editor

#1 Post by Cornflower »

[2018-07-18 Mod note: topic was originally "HxD Dex/Disk Editor update" at "Update" forum; moved to "Submission" since it's HxD official forum topic, which has been always portable. Database entry at: https://www.portablefreeware.com/?id=1454]

1.7.6.3

* Minor enhancements
o Java-exporter generates a byte-array instead of char-array.
o WindowState (Maximized/Normal/Minimized) can be set in configuration separately from the window position.

Website: http://www.mh-nexus.de/hxd/


Description from website:
HxD is a carefully designed and fast hex editor including raw disk editing, modifying foreign RAM and handling files of any size. Its clear interface offers searching/replacing, exporting, checksums/digests, insertion of byte patterns, a file shredder, concatenation or splitting of files, statistics and more.

Editing works like in a text editor with functions streamlined to hide differences that are purely technical.
For example you can view a drive just as one stream, can open it under Windows 9x or Windows NT+, undo, search, save, export or whatever you could do with a file. There is no sector-limited editing that gets in your way.

The same holds true for the file size (also > 4 GB), which doesn't affect editing speed and still supports undo. Or have a look at the RAM-editor that supports data-folding on every memory section and hides by default inaccessible memory, for a better overview but keeps the real offsets.

Special
Posts: 219
Joined: Wed Aug 14, 2013 7:22 am

Re: HxD Dex/Disk Editor update

#2 Post by Special »

Changelog v2.0.0.0:
https://mh-nexus.de/en/hxd/changelog.php

Code: Select all

Version 2.0.0.0
---------------

  * New: Data inspector
      • interprets bytes at the current caret position into various datatypes:
        - binary (bit sequence), integer, floats, time and date, character, GUID and disassembly (x86 and AMD64)
      • allows editing all types except for assembly
      • option to display integers in hexadecimal
      • option to select big/little endian byte order
      • property grid widget/control written from scratch
  * New: 64-bit version of HxD
      • support for RAM/virtual memory editing of other 64-bit processes
      • integration into 64-bit Windows Explorer context menu
  * New: Fully Unicode based GUI and program code
  * Enhanced: Disk-open window
      • Shows disks to non-admins to allow opening those that normal users have access to (e.g., removable USB drives) instead of always requiring to restart as admin.
      • Shows more information (name, hardware id, type, size) for easier identification
      • Sortable by columns/categories
      • Resizeable window
  * Enhanced: RAM/virtual memory open window
      • allows sorting, shows PID and bitness (32/64) of each process
  * Enhanced: Disk write handling
      • automatically unmount relevant partitions/volumes before writing, to avoid access errors where possible
  * Enhanced: Reduced locking to a minimum and adapted caching
    • significant code redesign and rewrite to allow for minimal file locking to enable easier sharing files with another program
    • less disturbing "file has changed externally" messages, at the bottom of a hex editor window
  * New: Import function
    • supported formats are: Intel Hex, Motorola S-Record and ETL Extended
  * Enhanced: Export function
    • new format: PureBasic
  * New: Alternating color for hex columns (configurable)
  * Enhanced: Compare window
      • option groupbox for window arrangement
      • option groupbox to select compare scope
  * New: Unified setup (includes all languages, all editions, 32/64-bitness)
          - Portable edition can be configured through setup, then becomes independent.
            - Ensures a user is not surprised when storing HxD to a write-once medium, then HxD opens for the first time and the configuration can't be changed.
          - Allows to create readonly config for HxD (e.g., for use on CD/DVD or USB thumb drives).
  * Better Windows Vista and higher support
      • Automatic request for admin priviledges when configuring Windows explorer context-menu
      • Better error handling for inaccessible disks
      • New file open/save windows
  * New: Recently opened disk images (restores bytes per sector as well)
  * Enhanced: Disk editor detects sectors larger than 512 byte and can access full size of a volume/disk (Windows could limit it to file system's end)
  * Enhanced: Allow “bytes per row” to go up to 4096 instead of just 512
  * New: Option to make hexadecimal numbers in editor lower case
  * New: Add CRC-32C as new supported checksum
  * Enhanced: CustomCRCSettings stored to config file
  * Changed: Statistics window evaluates the current selection only, or the entire file if there is no selection
  * Enhanced: Search window
      • Tab per datatype instead of a combobox
      • New "Search all" button (and result window)
  * Enhanced: Windows explorer context menu
      • Option to choose with entries to add, instead of adding both, "Open with HxD (readonly)" and "Open with HxD", by default
  * Enhanced: Update checker supports proxies that require user authentication
  * Enhanced: Hex Exporter adds number base when outputting offsets, e.g., "StartOffset(h): 12345678" 
  
  * Babelfish and related translation tool chain significantly enhanced for easier automation, 64 bit (PE file handling), Unicode, full XML, and new Delphi version support.
  
  * Performance enhancements, flicker reduction
  * Many bug fixes and other refinements of code and GUI (some listed in the forums)
  
  * Rewriting or updating lots of third party libs to x64 and Unicode
  * Patching Delphi RTL/VCL bugs
Download:
https://mh-nexus.de/en/hxd/

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rbon
Posts: 361
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Location: Italy

Re: HxD Dex/Disk Editor

#3 Post by rbon »

HxD rel. 2.5.0.0 has been released at February 11, 2021:
• web site: https://mh-nexus.de/en/hxd/
• download page: https://mh-nexus.de/en/downloads.php?product=HxD20
• direct download portable (english): https://mh-nexus.de/downloads/HxDPortableSetup.zip
• Softpedia: https://www.softpedia.com/get/PORTABLE- ... -HxD.shtml
• archive size: 3.19 MB
• only one archive for all portable versions: portable build is multilanguage.

Note_1
all the portable versions are listed at the bottom of the download page.

Note_2
Starting with HxD 2.3, the portable edition is available as separate setup program, and can be run with minimal privileges (no admin rights required).
For the portable edition, the setup program writes only into the selected folder (e.g., USB thumb drive).
Note_3
List of all portable localized build:
Chinese (simplified), Chinese (traditional), German, Greek, English, Spanish, French, Hungarian, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Dutch, Polish, Portuguese (Brazil), Russian, Turkish and Ukrainian.

What's new
List of changes in version 2.5.0.0 https://mh-nexus.de/en/hxd/changelog.php

Code: Select all

• Hex editor: implement horizontal mouse wheel scrolling (including handling of Logitech driver bug)

• Data inspector:
     ◦ New: added LEB128/ULEB128 types (variable width integer types used in WASM and dwarf debug information)
     ◦ New: introduce readonly type converters (to allow uniform error messages when attempting to change values, also for converter plugins)
     ◦ Enhancement: better error handling so that typical errors are caught and a more specific error message is given
        • error message for plugin DLLs of wrong machine type (x86-32 vs. x86-64)

• Exporters:
     ◦ New: skip undefined or unreadable sections, such that Intel Hex and S-Record files can be created that have gaps
     ◦ New: source code exporter option to set the maximum text column or bytes per lines (= array elements per line)
     ◦ New: SRecord and IntelHex exporters can now have maximum of 250 and 255 bytes per line, respectively
         •therefore there is also a new default block size/bytes per line setting for each of the exporters, which have a more common size of 32 (for both)
         • allows user to select very large block sizes, yet default to a commonly used size

• Importers:
     ◦ New: Intel Hex and S-Record support undefined regions of arbitrary size, by creating undefined foldable regions, instead of creating zero filled blocks for them
     ◦ Enhancement: rewrite logic to allow for data records that are out of order (addresses aren’t strictly increasing), or overlapping, even when there are gaps of undefined data; previously this could 
       lead to errors, or would only function without undefined data gaps
     ◦ Enhancement: Intel Hex and S-Record importers ignore leading and trailing whitespace in a line

• Checksums / digests:
     ◦ New: custom checksum
        • can generate a checksum, with settable bitwidth for the checksum result, the checksum addends, and the endianness
           • useful for various exotic formats, such as ROM files

• Search window:
     ◦ Enhancement: added support for (U)Int24
     ◦ use same code as datainspector to convert from string to integer
     ◦ improved the naming of floating point and integer types (closer to data inspector)
     ◦ searches for both signed and unsigned integers, choosing the right type depending on which fits best (negative numbers => negative type, positive numbers => unsigned type; this is ok, because the 
       positive numbers in the signed type have the same encoding as in the unsigned type; this is a feature of two’s complement encoding of integers)

• Tool windows:
     ◦ New: menu items and shortcuts to activate and cycle through tool windows
        • activates (and shows when hidden) either of: data inspector, checksums, or search results
        • implements MRU logic for activation (like Alt+Tab in Windows)
        • can be canceled (and originally activated tool window will be restored)
        • can handle dockable panels, pagecontrols, and childs of those to handle and keep track of activation
        • properly handles switching between back and forward cycling, by switching from Alt+F7 to Alt+Shift+F7, and interrupting cycling when pressing another shortcut
        • extended shortcut handling of VCL/Delphi to handle repeated uses of two shortcuts as part of a shortcut sequence, to properly implement MRU handling, and canceling sequencing (which 
           restores the originally activated tool window), or committing the last chosen tool window, as the activated one
     ◦ Global shortcut key Esc to focus editor window

• PasteFromClipboard:
     ◦ do not delete then insert data in pmOverwrite mode, instead, only overwrite
     ◦ also ensure selection/caret is restored, and therefore always begin a group if selection is available

• Extensive work to support undefined sections in hex editor that can be deleted, or overwritten, all with undo capability; concerned a lot of supporting internal data structures/algorithms
     ◦ allows for support in importing and exporting files with gaps (=undefined sections)
         • allows for round-trip handling of Intel Hex or S-Record files

• Settings:
     ◦ Data type converters only store their friendly type names in the settings/INI file, when the user changes them
         • this allows for updating those names from version to version, and having them appear automatically without resetting the data inspector in the options
            • also useful for translating HxD, which read the names from the settings when not resetting them, making it appear the translation is not complete

• Fix: entering positive numbers for (U)Int64 results in an out of range error message
• Fix: Search window: “any” bitwidth does not accept positive integers >= 2^63 (since it was limited to signed numbers only, now supports unsigned ones, too)
• Fix: HxD would sometimes not detect it was installed (and not in portable mode), because of a case sensitive path comparison
• Fix: access violation when deleting sections (sections were fixed before, so this bug never triggered)
• Fix: custom checksum computation uses wrong step size to advance in the byte stream it processes; it would advance in steps of the final checksum’s bitwidths, instead of the addend’s bitwidth
• Fix: when overwriting one nibble (key press in hex column) in unaccessible data, set the other nibble to 0 automatically
• Fix: dockable panels could change fonts in docked and undocked/floating modes
• Fix: several type and pointer shorting issues, due to types not compatible with x64; they would cause hard to track bugs in the x64 version of HxD under certain versions/configurations of Win 10 
  (ensuring everything is allocated in memory above 4GiB, during testing, allowed to track them down)
     ◦ issues were in some own code, some third party code, and some Delphi RTL code (TRttiContext, TValue.Make)

• Various other small enhancements and minor fixes
Note_4
as there are so many changes and I have difficulty creating a well formatted list of changes, I invite you to read the original post on the site.
Last edited by rbon on Sun Feb 14, 2021 9:42 am, edited 1 time in total.
"Programming today is a race between software engineers striving to build bigger and better idiot-proof programs, and the universe trying to build bigger and better idiots. So far, the universe is winning." - Rick Cook.

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Midas
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Location: Sol3

Re: HxD Dex/Disk Editor

#4 Post by Midas »

Database entry updated.

@rbon: With such long transcripts, I'd advise you to place them inside Spoiler (and/or Code) tags, which would make your post more readable on the whole, IMHO. :idea:

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rbon
Posts: 361
Joined: Wed Mar 28, 2007 2:16 am
Location: Italy

Re: HxD Dex/Disk Editor

#5 Post by rbon »

Midas wrote: Sat Feb 13, 2021 7:26 am @rbon: With such long transcripts, I'd advise you to place them inside Spoiler (and/or Code) tags, which would make your post more readable on the whole, IMHO. :idea:
Done, thanks.
"Programming today is a race between software engineers striving to build bigger and better idiot-proof programs, and the universe trying to build bigger and better idiots. So far, the universe is winning." - Rick Cook.

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