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Not nearly as cool, but I was able to show a colleague the letters in a raster image section of a pdf using xxd by varying the output width
by csours 7mo ago
Not nearly as cool, but I was able to show a colleague the letters in a raster image section of a pdf using xxd by varying the output width
- EvanAnderson 7mo agoI wrote a simple tool, when I was a kid, that dumped binaries into VGA mode 0x13 and allowed me to vary the width. Mode 0x13 is one byte per pixel so it was just a simple REP MOVSB to put data into the buffer (no worrying about bitplanes). It was so useful in reverse engineering software. Besides raster data, regular data structures often jump out.
- Retr0id 7mo agoFun fact, if you load a file with extension ".data" into GIMP there's a UI where you can set the pixel format and adjust the width/height with sliders
- userbinator 7mo agoPhotoshop does the same with the .raw extension.
- CamelCaseCondo 7mo agoI did the same thing to evaluate random number generators by drawing pixels with the count value. You see a pattern, line or clusters? Bad generator.
- sixothree 7mo agoI feel like everyone needs a peek inside a file in this manner at least once in their life. I just like to show people various file headers. Without you showing them, they might never see this kind of stuff.