You can move the cursor in two ways:
If the new cursor position is outside the currently visible page of data, the view scrolls automatically so that the new cursor position is made visible.
To access the Go to Offset Bar use: Ctrl+G).
→ (To move the cursor to a specific position in the file:
Type the offset in the Offset text entry (in the desired number format). if the typed offset starts with '0x' it is considered hexadecimal, if it starts with '0' it is considered octal, otherwise it is considered decimal.
Press the
button
There are three ways to select a range of data from the file you are editing:
To access the Select Range Bar use: Ctrl+Shift+R).
→ (To select a range:
Type the starting offset in the from text entry (in the desired number format). if the typed offset starts with '0x' it is considered hexadecimal, if it starts with '0' it is considered octal, otherwise it is considered decimal.
Type the ending offset in the to text entry (in the desired number format). if the typed offset starts with '0x' it is considered hexadecimal, if it starts with '0' it is considered octal, otherwise it is considered decimal.
Instead of specifying an absolute ending offset you can specify the length of the selection. To do this type the length in the to text entry, prepending it with either '+' or '-'. The '+' or '-' specify the direction of the selection: '+' means select towards the end of the file and '-' means select towards the beginning. The selected range always contains the starting offset.
Selecting a range of data has another useful effect: all the patterns matching the selected data in the file are highlighted, thus providing a quick way to find or emphasize patterns. The color of the highlighting can be changed using Layout files (see the section called “Layout Files”). This feature can be turned off in the Preferences Dialog (see the section called “General Preferences”).
The patterns matching the selected data are highlighted only if the selected data size is at most 1024 bytes.
By pressing the Insert key on the keyboard or by clicking on the edit mode statusbar, you can change the edit mode Bless is currently in. The edit mode determines what happens when you add new data to the file. There are two available modes:
The current edit mode is displayed at the far right in the statusbar.
You can change the number base of the information displayed in the statusbar (current offset, current selection). Clicking on the Offset or Selection information in the statusbar cycles among Hexadecimal, Decimal and Octal number bases. You can distinguish the current number base by checking the prefix of displayed numbers. A "0x" prefix denotes Hexadecimal, a "0" prefix denotes Octal and no prefix denotes Decimal.
You can directly modify the data in a file by using the keyboard:
Each area accepts only certain digits (eg the hexadecimal area accepts only 0-9 and A-F). If a key (representing a digit) is pressed in an area that doesn't accept it, the keypress is ignored.
Bless features an advanced system to handle clipboard operations.
To copy the selected data to the clipboard use: Ctrl+C).
→ (To cut the selected data from the file and copy it to the clipboard use: Ctrl+X).
→ (When copying or cutting data, that data becomes available to Bless and other applications as well. Bless can offer its data to other applications in two main formats:
Bless can offer the selected data as raw bytes to applications that can handle it, for example other hex editors. This is the format Bless uses when interacting with itself (for example when you copy from a tab and paste into another).
Bless can offer a string representation of the selected data in various number bases or UTF-8 text. The number base is determined by the type of the area that has the focus at the end of the selection action for the cut/copied data. For example if that area is hexadecimal, the offered string will contain the hexadecimal string representation of the selected data. If the ending area is the text area, the offered string will contain the UTF-8 text represented by the selected data (if possible).
To paste data from the clipboard to the current cursor position use: Ctrl+V).
→ (The value of the Overwrite/Insert mode, affects the way paste operations function. If the mode is Insert, the pasted data is inserted at the current cursor position. If the mode is Overwrite, the pasted data overwrites the data from the cursor position and on, as needed.
Pasted data can originate from Bless itself or some other application. Bless can accept data in two formats:
This is the format Bless uses when interacting with itself (for example when you copy from a tab and paste into another). External applications that offer raw bytes are usually other hex editors.
Bless can accept data as a UTF-8 string (for example, from a text editor). It tries to parse the data and convert it to raw bytes according to the type of the area that currently has the focus. For example if the focus is in an octal area, Bless will try to parse the string as a sequence of bytes represented in octal format. If the parse fails, the data will be inserted as UTF-8 text (as if they had been pasted into a text area).