Chapter 6. Frequently Asked Questions

6.1. Philosophical Questions
6.1.1. Why did you start Bless? Aren't there enough hex editors?
6.1.2. So, why didn't you contribute to one of the existing projects?
6.1.3. What kind of name is Bless?
6.2. Technical Questions
6.2.1. How can I get the latest source of Bless?
6.2.2. I don't like the way Bless displays data. Can I change it?
6.2.3. I am trying to save a large file (under the same name) but while saving Bless complains that there is no space left! I was sure I had enough space! What's going on?
6.2.4. The data in the data areas isn't displayed correctly! What is wrong?
6.2.5. Where does Bless keep its configuration files?

6.1. Philosophical Questions

6.1.1. Why did you start Bless? Aren't there enough hex editors?
6.1.2. So, why didn't you contribute to one of the existing projects?
6.1.3. What kind of name is Bless?

6.1.1.

Why did you start Bless? Aren't there enough hex editors?

There aren't enough free (as in speech) graphical hex editors. The two main ones are khexedit and ghex. Khexedit hasn't been updated in years and ghex is moving very slowly.

6.1.2.

So, why didn't you contribute to one of the existing projects?

I wanted to try out the mono/Gtk# combination for graphical applications and none such project existed.

6.1.3.

What kind of name is Bless?

It is a wordplay on the word hex. Hex also means curse and a bless(ing) is the opposite of a curse.

6.2. Technical Questions

6.2.1. How can I get the latest source of Bless?
6.2.2. I don't like the way Bless displays data. Can I change it?
6.2.3. I am trying to save a large file (under the same name) but while saving Bless complains that there is no space left! I was sure I had enough space! What's going on?
6.2.4. The data in the data areas isn't displayed correctly! What is wrong?
6.2.5. Where does Bless keep its configuration files?

6.2.1.

How can I get the latest source of Bless?

Bless now uses Bazaar-NG as its version control system. After you install Bazaar-NG on your system use the following command to get the latest version of Bless into the bless.dev directory (this might take some time):

bzr branch http://download.gna.org/bless/bless.dev

If you already downloaded a previous version (using the above command, not source tarballs) and want to update to the latest version use:

bzr pull

from within the directory that contains the previous version.

6.2.2.

I don't like the way Bless displays data. Can I change it?

Yes! Bless is highly customizable. See the section called “Layout Files”

6.2.3.

I am trying to save a large file (under the same name) but while saving Bless complains that there is no space left! I was sure I had enough space! What's going on?

To be able to save a file under the same name (File->Save command) you need to have (temporarily) enough disk space to hold both the original and the new file. This happens because the new file is created in a temporary file directory (eg /tmp see the section called “General Preferences”) and then moved to its proper position. For example if you have a 20MB file and edit it so that it becomes 21MB and the new file is supposed to be saved in the same storage device as /tmp, you need to have 20+21=41MB free space in that storage device to be able to save it. After a successful save, the original file is deleted, in this case freeing 20MB.Although this can be a problem (when there is not enough disk space), it can also be seen as a safety measure in case something goes wrong when saving.

A notable exception to the above is when the size of the file to be saved has not been changed. In that case the file is saved in-place.

6.2.4.

The data in the data areas isn't displayed correctly! What is wrong?

On some systems the data in the data areas are garbled. This is an issue with the font subsystem. What happens is that the font subsystem reports to Bless a different font width than the one that is actually used on screen. This bug should be fixed in current versions of Pango.

Anyway, the bug is now irrevelevant: since version 0.5.0 Bless uses a different way to measure the font width. Also, the temporary workaround with the FontWidthFix preference introduced in 0.4.1 is now disabled. If you are still experiencing such problems with versions >= 0.5.0 please file a bug report.

6.2.5.

Where does Bless keep its configuration files?

See the section called “Configuration Files”