A plug-in request that will give an incredible edge to Notepad++:
A long time ago, MS has introduced what they call "Structured Storage", which in essence, are files where the internal structure ressembles a drive structure with files (they call them IStream) and folders (they call them IStorage). This allows softwares to save/read their own file formats with complex data in a tree-like structure (MS Office uses this for example). Very powerful and very useful.
The downside it that these file cannot easily be read for debugging (they can be opened with an hexadecimal editor, for example the Notepad plug-in) but you have a horrible jumble so almost useless. What you wan to do is check that the list of storages(=folders) is the one that you expect, that they are in the right tree structure and check similarly the list and content of the streams(=files).
It would be nice to have an editor that displays the storage(=folder) structure of such a file (a tree view) and the stream(=file structure) and allow each stream's content to be edited individually (as an hexadecimal or text, i.e. using the hex edit plug-in). This way, if your software does handle MS Structured storage, a programmer would be able to debug and check the files he/she generates and check they are OK. Every developer would have a copy of Notepad++ if that feature was present.
As far as I know, the only (commercial) editor that has this feature is FlexEdit and it's rubbish.
Note: These files are also called OLE Compound files.
Hi,
A plug-in request that will give an incredible edge to Notepad++:
A long time ago, MS has introduced what they call "Structured Storage", which in essence, are files where the internal structure ressembles a drive structure with files (they call them IStream) and folders (they call them IStorage). This allows softwares to save/read their own file formats with complex data in a tree-like structure (MS Office uses this for example). Very powerful and very useful.
The downside it that these file cannot easily be read for debugging (they can be opened with an hexadecimal editor, for example the Notepad plug-in) but you have a horrible jumble so almost useless. What you wan to do is check that the list of storages(=folders) is the one that you expect, that they are in the right tree structure and check similarly the list and content of the streams(=files).
It would be nice to have an editor that displays the storage(=folder) structure of such a file (a tree view) and the stream(=file structure) and allow each stream's content to be edited individually (as an hexadecimal or text, i.e. using the hex edit plug-in). This way, if your software does handle MS Structured storage, a programmer would be able to debug and check the files he/she generates and check they are OK. Every developer would have a copy of Notepad++ if that feature was present.
As far as I know, the only (commercial) editor that has this feature is FlexEdit and it's rubbish.
Note: These files are also called OLE Compound files.
See: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa380369\(VS.85).aspx
David.