WISH Binary Viewer is an ultra-light, super-simple binary file viewer written entirely in Tcl/Tk. To run the program from the Unix/Linux command line, enter "wishbinvu &" (without the quotes) to open it blank, or "wishbinvu <insert name of file you want to view> &" to open it with a file already displayed. I guess it probably works on Windows too, although I haven't confirmed that yet. It requires at least version 8.5 of Tcl and Tk. The only features of WISH Binary Viewer that may need even a little explanation, I think, are the View, Save, Find, and Color Display buttons.

View: If you click the View button, a little box containing several checkbuttons and radiobuttons will open up. The checkbuttons will let you display a file in any combination of (1) hexadecimal codes, (2) binary codes, (3) decimal codes, and (4) text content. The width of the window will be automatically adjusted (within reason) to show at least a little of everything. The scrollbar on the right makes everything scroll together.

With the radiobuttons, you can choose whether to show the hexadecimal codes in "expanded" form (pretty readable, with a space between each two-digit code for one byte) or "compressed" form (not very readable, no spaces). The binary and decimal codes are always shown with spaces in between the bytes; you'll need to modify the code yourself if you ever want to use this program to view massive continuous strings of ones and zeroes with no spaces in between.

You can also choose whether to show "special" characters (from the ISO-8859-1/Latin-1 character set), or only plain ASCII characters, in the text content. Non-text characters (including the ISO Latin-1 ones, if you've selected the plain ASCII text representation) will be represented in the text content by the character you designate in the "Substitute for non-text" entry box.

Save: If you insist, you can use WISH Binary Viewer not only to view binary files, but also to edit and save them. I don't recommend this unless you're really, really sure you know what you're doing. If you do it, though, don't worry if the ends of lines don't come out even after you're done editing; all extra whitespace of any kind will be removed from the hexadecimal representation before it's converted to actual binary code and saved.

Find: The Find button will open a little box containing (1) an entry line for search criteria; (2) a line of radiobuttons to indicate which display you want to search (i.e., Binary, Decimal, Hexadecimal, or Text); (3) a "Find" button; and (4) a bottom line with a "Match case" checkbutton, "Up" and "Down" radiobuttons, and a "Done" button. You can also use the F2 key to open the box and do the search.

Color Display: This button will open up a "WISH Color Picker Plus" box to let you determine what colors will appear in the program's windows. In the box, you'll see sliders to change the proportions of red, green, and blue, and a button to display the color. The sliders go from 0 (none) to 255 (maximum). There's also a listbox containing color names; you can right-click or double left-click to select a color, and then modify it with the sliders if you wish. The "PICK" button displays the selected color, with its name or hexadecimal (base 16) code in black letters if the color is light, or white ones if the color is dark. For example, if you select a color with 255 parts red, 204 parts green, and 153 parts blue, the hexadecimal code (displayed in black letters) will be "FFCC99" because "FF" in hexadecimal numeration means 255, "CC" means 204, and "99" means 153.

To the right of the color names, there's a label that says "CHOOSE COLOR TO CHANGE," followed by a bunch of things you can change the color of (e.g., window background, buttons, boxes, labels, and more). On each line here, there's a radiobutton, then the name of something to change the color of, and finally a little button displaying the current color and name or code of that thing. Click a radiobutton to select a line; then click the big "PICK" button, or a little color button on another line. The color from the button you click will be copied to the color button on the selected line. The change won't show up elsewhere until you click the "Apply Picked Colors" button below the color-name listbox.

Near the bottom left corner of the box, there's a color-scheme listbox with an entry line for adding or changing color-scheme names. Some names of sample color schemes should be in the listbox. (They come from a subdirectory of your home directory, "/home/[you]/.wishes/colorschemes"; the code for each color scheme is kept in a separate, human-readable file.) To apply a color scheme, select it and then click "Apply Color Scheme" (you can also just right-click or double-click the color name). To create a new color scheme, pick the colors for the scheme and click "Apply Picked Colors"; then put a name for the scheme on the entry line and click "Name This Color Scheme" or hit Enter. To revise an existing color scheme, change some colors and enter the scheme name on the entry line (if it isn't already there); then hit Enter or click "Yes" in the box that will ask whether to revise the color scheme. Obviously, click the color-scheme name and "Delete Color Scheme" to delete a color scheme. Finally, click "OK" to save the currently applied colors as your preferred colors, or "Close" to close the color-selection box without saving.

Everything else: On the other buttons, you can just read the button text and see what they do. "Open" opens files; "Copy" copies whatever you've selected (you can use Control-c too); "Quit" shuts the program down; "HELP" gives you this help window, as you've already figured out. To send me inquisitive or helpful messages with no flames in them, e-mail me at .

David McClamrock <mcclamrock@locl.net>
November 2008

HOME