ectizen
Posts: 139
Joined: 2/24/2001
From: melbourne, australia
Status: offline
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Don: A binary editor is something that allows you to edit any kind of file.
Normally, you'd use a program designed specifically to handle certain types of files. For example, to work with Microsoft .DOC files, you'd typically use either Word or Wordpad. Similarly, to work with SP:WAW .DAT files, you use something like SP:WAW, WAWMap or SpWaWEd. These programs work by taking the raw data in the files, interpretting it and presenting it in such a way that the user can manipulate it without having to know how it's stored. These programs can only handle their own files - Wordpad can't display SP:WAW maps, and WAWMap can't edit Word documents.
A binary editor is different, because it allows you to edit any file. It doesn't try to decode the contents of the file, it simply displays it as it's stored - a great big list of numbers. If you know how the numbers are arranged and what they mean, you can change them. And this is why it can be dangerous to use these things: even if you don't know what anything means, you can still change it. If you change the wrong number you can damage the data, making it unusable. For exmaple, you could change the width of a map to 170 - SP:WAW wouldn't expect this (the maximum width is 100), and might say that the file is corrupt, or might even try to use it and thus cause a blue screen.
Hopefully I've shown that if you know what you're doing, this can be quick and easy, but if you don't, you really shouldn't try it.
ruxius: The editor I use is called "XVI32". This isn't a SP:WAW tool - it's a general purpose utility. There are many different binary editors, I just happen to like this one. You can get it from here. But if you do try this, backup first. And read the help to find out how to search for things and change them. And backup first. :eek:
Don Doom: Yeah, I tried WAWMap but couldn't figure it out easily, so I resorted to the method I knew would work - using hard-earned knowledge from the development of Map Thing :)
To add pictures to your messages, you'll need to put them on a web server, and add something like the following to your posts:
[ img]http://www.dondoom.server.com/yourdirectory/picture.jpg[/img ]
Note that the [ img] and [/img ] don't actually contain spaces (they were needed to stop the forum from trying to display the picture).
Note also that if you use a free web hosting service (like Geocities) they may not let you do this.
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