[Romsstar]

My favoured Hexeditor for Hacking is Windhex and actually I'm quite happy with a lot of stuff it is doing,
but it lacks a feature which is important for me:

Search+Replace.
If you want to replace recurring strings you have to replace everyone per Hand.

This gets tedious.
But I do like the Interface of Windhex and the Table Support, you can search for Kana,
it has Unicode Support and more.

If I want to replace something I have to switch between Editors and my question is:

Is there any Hexeditor that comes close in functionality and simplicity but offers also a replace function?

Or is the source of Windhex public? It has been so many years but still I feel the lack of a Hexeditor which really is customized for Romhacking.
If a Hexeditor offers one thing it lacks the other...
I've checked numerous of the Hex Editors we have in the Utilities Section but couldn't really find what I was looking for.

Maybe someone can suggest a better one? I've been working with Windhex for a while now and actually was quite happy, but when I have to replace more than 1000 strings I'd love to have something that can deal with it without me having to replace every single string per hand.

[Nightcrawler]

You'll probably end up having to switch between editors. There's very few ROM hacking specific hex editors and most (as you know) are poorly developed in the generic hex editing area compared to non ROM hacking specific hex editing programs. Windhex is still not open source.

I use HxD for most any non-ROM hacking specific hex edit. It can do search and replace easily.

I made an inquiry to the author for the source in hopes that I could add table support and make an awesome ROM hacking hex editor, but unfortunately that is also closed source and I could not have it.

[creeperton]

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[Azkadellia]

If you don't mind mucking about with the train wreck that is wxWidgets, you could always download the source to MadEdit and tailor it to suit romhackers.

[EarlJ]

The source for Translhextion is also around, if somebody wanted to use that.

Although now that I look at the date on it... holy crap, it's going to be 12 this year!
Now I feel old.

[kingofcrusher]

If you don't mind mucking about with the train wreck that is wxWidgets, you could always download the source to MadEdit and tailor it to suit romhackers.

Sorry that this is off-topic, but why do you say wxWidgets is a train wreck? I was considering using it for the GUI to a couple tools I made for the ColecoVision because of the cross-platform compatibility. I'd like to make them available for Mac (my choice) and Windows (so others can use them) and wxWidgets seemed like the easiest way, but if it sucks I'd rather not waste the time on it and just learn to use the Windows API instead.

[Klarth]

but if it sucks I'd rather not waste the time on it and just learn to use the Windows API instead.

Using win32api to code a GUI is a soul-sucking experience.  I can't give you a good suggestion for a C++ Windows GUI framework as I've moved onto C#/.NET.  But definitely don't use win32api if the GUI is more complex than a simple dialog box.

[Azkadellia]

Sorry that this is off-topic, but why do you say wxWidgets is a train wreck? I was considering using it for the GUI to a couple tools I made for the ColecoVision because of the cross-platform compatibility. I'd like to make them available for Mac (my choice) and Windows (so others can use them) and wxWidgets seemed like the easiest way, but if it sucks I'd rather not waste the time on it and just learn to use the Windows API instead.

wxWidgets is the worst part of MFC magnified. If you want cross-platform, Qt's better. Failing that, there's always mono.

[Rhys]

Don't use Win32, a lot of things you come to rely on being done for you - namely Live Resize and the like aren't in Win32. Qt's been a bag of hurt for me on my various attempts to use it in Linux and OS X, Windows may be another story.

wxWidgets made me want to kill myself - and that was just reading the documentation

Most of them either suck to use or are ridiculously over implemented, whatever one you pick you'll end up raging after a while. Literally the only app framework I've gotten on well with is Windows Forms, if you still want to code in C++ that's more than possible with Windows Forms, it's just Managed C++, which afaik is just a wrapper around the standard variety.

[BRPXQZME]

OS X throws a wrench into pretty much all the cross-platform widget kits. There is no great way around that, unfortunately.

[LostTemplar]

Qt is way too bloated in my book, and it can be rather unintuitive at times. It gets the job done though, so if wxWidgets isn't up your alley (I can't say, having never used it) you might give it a try. I think the difference between professional and open source shows pretty clearly in the design of all those GUI toolkits. For instance, I've always found that Windows Forms was very easy to develop for and that it was very intuitive. Cocoa is very nice, too, although I don't really like Objective-C. It's a shame that these are platform-specific.

By the way, if you end up writing it yourself, you might want to try C++/CLI (a "managed" variant of C++) for your Windows GUI. It lets you use the .net Framework in C++ and although the GUI will end up being "managed", you can easily call your own "unmanaged" C/C++ routines. (You could e.g. also write the GUI in C# and write a wrapper for your C++ code in C++/CLI.)

[Nightcrawler]

Using win32api to code a GUI is a soul-sucking experience.  I can't give you a good suggestion for a C++ Windows GUI framework as I've moved onto C#/.NET.  But definitely don't use win32api if the GUI is more complex than a simple dialog box.

Seconded. Using C++ for such purposes will undoubtedly require many more lines of code. I'd rather spend my time in the problem domain where it matters most.

[creeperton]

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[LostTemplar]

Well, it has a Hex Editor control, if I recall correctly. I used Phoenix a bit when I modified his script editor for Far East of Eden Zero. It's easy to use, but don't expect anything beyond basic UI.

[kingofcrusher]

Awesome, thanks for the tips guys. I'm fine on the Mac as it's what I do all my coding on, but I need to learn to create a Windows GUI as I know basically nothing about Windows programming (I just use the old classic console for everything I need to do in Windows, hah). I'll look into the C++/CLI idea that LostTemplar suggested, that sounds like it would work best for me.

I'm glad I asked, I had wxWidgets installed and was getting ready to read through the docs and get started, hah.