Feature request: support alternative hexadecimal digits, such as Bibi-binary

[carbon-starlight]

I feel like this or other alternative systems are more intuitive than 0-9A-F.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hexadecimal#Alternative_symbols

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bibi-binary

[WerWolv]

Hey! I assume you're talking about the symbols used in the hex editor view of ImHex? In which case, I'd transfer this issue over to the main repository.

I honestly never heard of any other ways to represent hexadecimal so I'm actually kinda interested. What makes these symbols more intuitive? Who uses them / where are they used?

Doing a quick search, the bibi-binary symbols seem to not exist in the unicode standard so it will probably be pretty difficult for us to use them.

[carbon-starlight]

Hello! Yes, it seems like I accidentally created this issue in a repo for patterns, it was the first page Google gave me and I didn't pay enough attention to the name.

There exists some advocacy for a more consistent set of digits for 0-15 going back as far as 1968, from Wikipedia:

Bruce Alan Martin of Brookhaven National Laboratory considered the choice of A–F "ridiculous". In a 1968 letter to the editor of the CACM, he proposed an entirely new set of symbols based on the bit locations.

I personally found usage of, say, regular digits "40" for decimal number "28" quite confusing when first getting into binary editing. Usage of a new set of digits with consistent rules (that arabic digits lack btw but we get used to them since primary school) could be of some help.

These 3 sets of alternative numerals were found notable enough to be included to CSUR, the second most popular PUA registry after NerdFonts, see https://www.kreativekorp.com/ucsur/#:~:text=EBE0%E2%88%92EBEF,Ronald%20O.%20Whitaker. Martin's proposal in particular takes range EBF0−EBFF: .

There are multiple fonts that support CSUR, e.g. Unifont, Constructium, Fairfax, etc. Supporting these characters should be as simple as replacing 0-F with these characters in digits field and enabling FairfaxHD font. Alternatively, a font to map these glyphs to 0-A may be constructed.