Arch Linux

aardwolf

Member

From: Belgium

Registered: 2005-07-23

Posts: 305

Good graphical text editor that can also open binary files?

Hello,

Long ago, text editors in Linux could also open binary files. You'd see gibberish characters, but textual parts were readable in there. Then, already several years ago, it became a trend for Linux text editors to instead give an error like "The file ... does not look like a text file or the file encoding is not supported".

And now I no longer know a graphical text editor that wants to display such files, except IntelliJ but that one isn't the most convenient one to just view a text file and opening large log files in it makes it slow.

This ability is useful, e.g. when wanting to view a file that is the combination of text and some binary parts. E.g. a log file I'd like to view now.

Using "strings" for that is cumbersome. I want to view it in a graphical editor.

Does anyone know a good simple graphical text editor that can do this and actually supports this on purpose so that there's no risk that it'll also join the "I don't want to display binary files" crew in the future?

I'd be super happy if there existed on that uses the good old IBM charset which has the smileys for ascii values 1 and 2 etc... to display the 256 possible bytes, except that it should of course use the newline character as an actual new line!

Thanks!

Please don't talk about hex editors or the hexdump command. For what I'm trying to view, the fastest way is to be able to graphically scroll through it, and there is a lot of plain text mixed in this file. Thank you

Last edited by aardwolf (2012-07-26 10:04:06)

w0ng

Member

From: Australia

Registered: 2009-06-04

Posts: 88

Website

Re: Good graphical text editor that can also open binary files?

gvim

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WorMzy

Administrator

From: Scotland

Registered: 2010-06-16

Posts: 12,700

Website

Re: Good graphical text editor that can also open binary files?

vim can open binaries. gvim is the "graphical" version.

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aardwolf

Member

From: Belgium

Registered: 2005-07-23

Posts: 305

Re: Good graphical text editor that can also open binary files?

gvim

Hmm, looking good for viewing the text and stuff!

It seems to miss things like a menu with "copy" option if you right click on a selection and such though! It seems like it doesn't even support pasting with middle mouse click in a different text editor than itself after selecting something.

I like how it shows the non-ascii characters as control codes like ^F.

Does gvim support binary text because the makers actually want it to, or is it just a coincidence?

Last edited by aardwolf (2012-07-26 10:08:41)

x33a

Forum Fellow

Registered: 2009-08-15

Posts: 4,587

Re: Good graphical text editor that can also open binary files?

Vim is one of the best editors out there, so it's no coincidence that it can open binary files.

As for copying, the default copy buffer of vim doesn't sync with the X clipboard. To do that use "+y, but that is already available in the edit menu of gvim.

simon.swe

Member

From: sverige

Registered: 2012-02-26

Posts: 148

Website

Re: Good graphical text editor that can also open binary files?

emacs

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ngoonee

Forum Fellow

From: Between Thailand and Singapore

Registered: 2009-03-17

Posts: 7,358

Re: Good graphical text editor that can also open binary files?

You know, considering the OP is obviously very much a point-and-click guy, all vim/emacs related links are quite pointless. Even though vim DOES rock hard.....

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ewaller

Administrator

From: Pasadena, CA

Registered: 2009-07-13

Posts: 20,364

Re: Good graphical text editor that can also open binary files?

You know, considering the OP is obviously very much a point-and-click guy, all vim/emacs related links are quite pointless. Even though vim DOES rock hard.....

xemacs ?

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JackH79

Member

From: Australia

Registered: 2009-06-18

Posts: 663

Website

Re: Good graphical text editor that can also open binary files?

try geany.

Edit: Ah, didn't read the OP's request properly. Not sure if Geany can handle binary files. Maybe give it a shot and see if it works.

Last edited by JackH79 (2012-07-27 04:34:50)

liquibyte

Member

Registered: 2007-11-11

Posts: 91

Website

Re: Good graphical text editor that can also open binary files?

Geany does not support viewing of binary files any longer. It used to but somewhere along the way they changed it. I was disappointed when they did this as I use that feature at times as well.

vacant

Member

From: downstairs

Registered: 2004-11-05

Posts: 816

Re: Good graphical text editor that can also open binary files?

Medit doesn't barf at binary stuff.