Insphex, a hex dump tool in Medley Common Lisp
I'm developing the new program Insphex (inspect hex), a hex dump tool that is created with and runs on the Medley Interlisp environment.
Similarly to the Linux command hexdump, it shows the contents of files as hexadecimal values and the corresponding ASCII characters. An early version of the program prints the hex dump to the standard output like this.
I plan to enhance Insphex to optionally display the dump in a separate window one page at a time. An attached menu will have options for showing the next page and exiting. I'll also provide an Exec command for running the program.
The code is in Common Lisp but will include some Interlisp to access the required system functionality.
Although Insphex is useful in itself, I have three main goals for it. First, I want a real project to practice the process for writing Common Lisp with the residential environment of Medley. This is the native way of coding on Medley and takes full advantage of its development environment and features such as the File Manager and the SEdit editor.
Most Medley tools and facilities are written in Interlisp or expose Interlisp APIs through which the functionality can be invoked. So another goal is to interface with Interlisp from Common Lisp to access the functionality I need like windows and menus.
My third goal is to experiment with displaying textual output in TEdit, the Medley word processor where the hex dump will optionally go.
Although the Interlisp API of TEdit supports advanced editing and formatting, Insphex does only basic text output. The primary feature I want is TEdit's ability to automatically handle repainting the window after it's resized or a hidden portion is exposed. This is handy as by default Interlisp windows mostly don't handle the repaint.
Now that the basic functionality of Insphex is in place I will implement displaying the hex dump in a TEdit window.
#insphex #CommonLisp #Interlisp #Lisp
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