IdeaWell

Project ideas from Hacker News discussions.

Your hex editor should color-code bytes

Original Article

Hacker News Discussion

📝 Discussion Summary (Click to expand)

Theme 1 – Coloring helps spot patterns
- “For debug dumps with many many hashes it really helps readability and tracking hashes across lines.” – a_t48
- “It is surprising how much difference just a little splash of colour can make if it isn’t overdone.” – dspillett
- “It’s much easier to pick out the unique byte when it’s a different color! human brains are really good at spotting visual patterns.” – 7bit

Theme 2 – Skepticism about usefulness and over‑coloring concerns
- “Even colored these dumps still feels unappealing to me … this is admittedly subjective gut jumping.” – psychoslave
- “You don’t really know beforehand which byte values are important. Manually selecting C0 to make it stand out is just ctrl+f with extra steps.” – NooneAtAll3
- “The random colors at each byte is messing up with my brain making it hard to fast identify C0 …” – greatgib

Theme 3 – Tools and enhancements for better hex viewing
- “I really like hexyl … which does this by default.” – azalemeth
- “Binvis … creates a colored minimap … extremely powerful for identifying interesting areas and patterns.” – xyx0826
- “Radare2 also has excellent hex viewing/editing support.” – adv_zxy
- “DataGrip lets you apply heatmap colors to dataframes and database tables.” – duckmysick
- “My own hex viewer … has a --windows flag to partition the hex view.” – asibahi

🚀 Project Ideas

Generating project ideas…

Hexicade: Smart Terminal Hex Viewer

Summary

  • A terminal‑based hex viewer that applies semantic, rule‑based coloring (e.g., highlight 0x00, 0xFF, protocol‑specific fields) and supports flexible byte grouping via a --windows flag.
  • Core value proposition: instantly makes binary dumps readable by coloring according to meaning, not just byte value, while staying lightweight and fully keyboard‑driven.

Details

Key Value
Target Audience Developers, reverse engineers, embedded sysadmins who work in terminals
Core Feature Configurable color/glyph rules + windowed grouping + live preview
Tech Stack Rust (for speed), Crossterm for ANSI, TOML config, optional WASM plugins
Difficulty Medium
Monetization Hobby

Notes

  • HN users lamented that hexl-mode makes all faces the same color and wished for “semantic coloring based on structure” (js8) and a --windows flag for custom grouping (asibahi).
  • Provides a terminal‑native alternative to browser‑based tools, addressing concerns about RAM usage (pratyahava) while offering the pattern‑spotting power of colored hex dumps (7bit, dspillett).

HexHighlight: Extensible Hex‑Dump Styling Library

Summary

  • A reusable library (with CLI and editor plugins) that lets users define color, bold, italic, or background rules for hex dump output using simple YAML/JSON descriptors.
  • Core value proposition: turn any hex‑dump producer (objdump, xxd, custom scripts) into a visually tuned output without changing the underlying tool.

Details

Key Value
Target Audience Tool builders, devops engineers, anyone who generates hex dumps in scripts or CI
Core Feature Rule‑based styling engine (byte ranges, values, regex on ASCII side) with ANSI/HTML output
Tech Stack Python core, plugins for Neovim/VS Code via LSP, optional WASM for browser use
Difficulty Low
Monetization Hobby

Notes

  • Commenters wanted “configuration options for the user… so those with colour‑blindness issues can tweak things” (dspillett) and the ability to “allow bold/italic/other as well as colours” for accessibility.
  • Enables reuse across many workflows, sparking discussion on how to share rule sets for common file formats (ELF, PCAP, protobuf) – a natural HN topic.

BinMap: Native GUI Hex Editor with Minimap & Templates

Summary

  • A lightweight, cross‑platform GUI hex editor that combines a traditional hex view with a file‑wide minimap (like binvis.io) and supports loadable templates for structured data display.
  • Core value proposition: gives developers an at‑a‑glance visual overview of large binaries while still offering deep, editable hex inspection, all without opening a browser.

Details

Key Value
Target Audience Security researchers, firmware engineers, game modders who need both overview and detail
Core Feature Integrated minimap + template‑driven structured views + configurable color schemes
Tech Stack C++ with Qt/Vulkan for rendering, optional Lua for template scripts
Difficulty High
Monetization Revenue‑ready: “Freemium: free base editor, paid template library”

Notes

  • Users praised binvis.io’s minimap for “identifying interesting areas and patterns” (xyx0826) but rejected browser RAM cost; BinMap offers the same insight natively.
  • The desire for “template files and can display structured data, disassembly” (GuB-42) is met directly, likely generating enthusiastic discussion on HN about sharing community templates.

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