For some types of editing, particularly “binary” files, it is easiest to display and edit the file in hexadecimal. Octal editing is also available.
You can switch to hexadecimal or octal editing in three ways:
VIEW > Toggle hex mode split lets you edit a file in two windows; one displays in hexadecimal, the other in normal ASCII. (You can also display in EBCDIC.) The ASCII window initially uses display mode “4” in which all characters, including the “newline” <LF>, <CR> and <Tab> characters are displayed literally (using the IBM PC character set). The cursors in both windows are synchronized and will move together.
When editing in hexadecimal, you may find it easier to treat the file as a binary file with a uniform 16 or 64 characters displayed per screen line. You can easily enter Binary-16 mode by selecting VIEW > Toggle hex mode split again. VIEW > Toggle binary/text mode ( Alt-= ) toggles between Binary-16, Binary-64 and the normal file types.
By default, selecting a binary file type will only let you overstrike characters and not insert or delete characters. If you need to insert/delete, change CONFIG > File handling > Overwrite mode to “0”.
Use WINDOW > Next window ( Ctrl-F6 ), WINDOW > Switch ( Alt-F5 ) or the mouse to switch between the windows. If desired, use VIEW > Toggle display mode ( Alt-D or toolbar) to toggle either window to a different display mode. For example, you can toggle the ASCII window to EBCDIC so that you can edit in hex and EBCDIC at the same time.
In a hex-mode window, new characters must be entered in hexadecimal, i.e. by entering “00” through “FF”. Other characters cause an error beep. Similarly, in octal-mode, new characters must be entered in octal, i.e. by entering “000” through “377”.
When the current window is displayed in hexadecimal, the status line changes to display the cursor’s hexadecimal offset into the file.