Two enhancement requests for registry editor functionality

[MikeC]

(1) Pre-select the value data when the Edit Registry Value dialog is displayed.  While using Microsoft's "regedit" program, when you want to change a value of an item from, for example, 0 to 1, you can use the numeric key pad and press keys Enter 1 Enter.  Very quick and easy because when the edit dialog comes up, the value data is pre-selected.  When the MC edit dialog is displayed, the cursor is at the end of the data value causing the user to have to back-space, Ctrl+A, or Ctrl+Shift+Home to select all the data; the key sequence becomes Enter Ctrl+A 1 Enter.  Now if some users like it the way it is now, then how about adding the "regedit way" to a check box on one of the settings screens.

(2) Display REG_BINARY data showing ASCII (ANSI?) characters in the Edit Registry Value dialog.  Again, this functionality should be similar to Microsoft's "regedit" program.  The regedit Value data box looks something like this:
0000  01 07 00 23 27 00 00 23  ...#'..#
0008  27 00 00 07 00 00 00 05  '......
0010  3C 00 41 00 44 00 55 00  <.A.D.U.
0018  3E 00 13 27 00 00 FF 00  >..'....
0020  00 00 0B 3C 00 4F 00 76  ...<.O.v
0028  00 65 00 72 00 73 00 70  .e.r.s.p
0030  00 65 00 65 00 64 00 3E  .e.e.d.>
Notice that one can easily pick out the Unicode strings.

[Mathias (Author)]

(1) Pre-select the value data when the Edit Registry Value dialog is displayed.  While using Microsoft's "regedit" program, when you want to change a value of an item from, for example, 0 to 1, you can use the numeric key pad and press keys Enter 1 Enter.  Very quick and easy because when the edit dialog comes up, the value data is pre-selected.  When the MC edit dialog is displayed, the cursor is at the end of the data value causing the user to have to back-space, Ctrl+A, or Ctrl+Shift+Home to select all the data; the key sequence becomes Enter Ctrl+A 1 Enter.  Now if some users like it the way it is now, then how about adding the "regedit way" to a check box on one of the settings screens.

Yes having the text preselected when the edit dialog is shown might be a good think. Will look into that.

(2) Display REG_BINARY data showing ASCII (ANSI?) characters in the Edit Registry Value dialog.  Again, this functionality should be similar to Microsoft's "regedit" program.  The regedit Value data box looks something like this:
0000  01 07 00 23 27 00 00 23  ...#'..#
0008  27 00 00 07 00 00 00 05  '......
0010  3C 00 41 00 44 00 55 00  <.A.D.U.
0018  3E 00 13 27 00 00 FF 00  >..'....
0020  00 00 0B 3C 00 4F 00 76  ...<.O.v
0028  00 65 00 72 00 73 00 70  .e.r.s.p
0030  00 65 00 65 00 64 00 3E  .e.e.d.>
Notice that one can easily pick out the Unicode strings.

A better editor for binary values would be very nice to have and I have a point on my todo list to make the editing of binary better. But doing an editor like the one in regedit for binary values would require a lot of work and take a lot of time to develop. And I got a lot off items on my todo list. Since the most common values that people change in the registry are Strings and Numbers (REG_SZ, REG_DWORD) a better binary editor is not prioritized, since it is very rarely that user changes them.
However it is on my list.. So sometime in the future it might be fixed.

[MikeC]

Of course, I have absolutely no idea how the MC code is designed and written; nor do I know anything about your development philosophy.  But would it be possible to use an already developed hex editor for displaying REG_BINARY data?  Something like the Hex Editor OCX control available here http://www.codeproject.com/KB/edit/hexeditor.aspx, thus saving you a whole lot of time and effort?

Just a friendly suggestion.

P.S. The project I work on uses a portion of the code of that OCX editor (or maybe a similar one, I can't remember) to  imbed in one of our internal development/debug tools.  It works great.

[Mathias (Author)]

Of course, I have absolutely no idea how the MC code is designed and written; nor do I know anything about your development philosophy.  But would it be possible to use an already developed hex editor for displaying REG_BINARY data?  Something like the Hex Editor OCX control available here http://www.codeproject.com/KB/edit/hexeditor.aspx, thus saving you a whole lot of time and effort?

Just a friendly suggestion.

P.S. The project I work on uses a portion of the code of that OCX editor (or maybe a similar one, I can't remember) to  imbed in one of our internal development/debug tools.  It works great.

Thanks.

But I can not use it as it is, since I can not have an dependency to a ocx since it require installation and registration. MC support so called xcopy deployment so ocx is not good. And Since the registry extension is a Win32/WTL component I can not include MFC in it. I will need to create a WTL based controller.

But the source for it will be useful when I write a WTL version of it. Will make it easier. Thanks