Tweak Zoo

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Daryl Kowal

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Jan 9, 2024, 3:42:26 AM1/9/24
to gilreodelgau

Tweak is a hex editor. It allows you to edit a file at very lowlevel, letting you see the full and exact binary contents of thefile. It can be useful for modifying binary files such asexecutables, editing disk or CD images, debugging programs thatgenerate binary file formats incorrectly, and many other things.Tweak currently runs on Unix, using the ncurses libraryto run in a terminal.Why yet another hex editor?Tweak uses a complex data structure based on B-trees, designed tomake almost all editing operations extremely fast, even when theyare working on huge amounts of data.The data structure isdescribed in detail on a separate page forthose interested. The bottom line is:

  • Tweak supports insert mode (not particularly useful if you'reediting an executable file or a filesystem image, but can beextremely handy in other file formats such as PNG).
  • Cutting, copying and pasting within the file you are editing isextremely efficient. No matter how big the chunk of data you aremoving around - even if it's a 200Mb section of a CD image - Tweakwill always perform the operation effectively instantly.
  • Tweak supports lazy loading of the input file: rather than suckingit all into memory straight away, it simply remembers which parts ofthe editing buffer are copies of which parts of the input file andrefers to the file on disk when it needs to. Tweak only has to takesignificant time when you genuinely need it to read the entire file.The only two operations with this property are searching,and saving the modified version of the file to disk. Everything elseis instant.
You might think, from reading this, that the entire purpose ofpublishing Tweak was to show off my shiny data structure. You wouldbe right :-)What is its current status?The current public release, Tweak 3.02, is available as a sourcetarball here:tweak-3.02.tar.gzYou can read its man page online.If you want to see the latest state of development, you can checkthe development sources out from my git repository:git clone , you can browse the repository on the web,here.

That's because Ubuntu 18.04 ships by default with GNOME 3.28, in which they renamed the gnome-tweak-tool to gnome-tweaks. And in the Activities Overview can be found by searching for Tweaks.

This tweak/tip guide will be full of caveats. Why? Because tweak guides should be full of caveats, of course. There are always implications and side effects to any choices you make when customizing a system.

Annoyingly, I usually have to restart GNOME to be able to see applications with desktop items in the list of applications and gnome-shell search. Does gnome-tweaks launch from the command-line? (Or you could try to restart GNOME.)

On the X3 Live...when both lights WAH an VOL are lit up, I'm in Tweak mode, but regardless of what I set tweak to control for the current tone (via the System screen), the pedal does not affect it that setting (or any setting). Why? Does anyone out there have an X3 with a tweak mode that is operational or is that broken for everyone? The pedal controls Wah and Volume just fine, and sends out appropriate Midi signals too.

EDIT: Okay, my pedal tweak works after all. I learned two things: 1) the pedal tweak will not change the values you can manually set (and change via knobs), so, for example, if you set the pedal tweak to reverb volume and you move the pedal up and down, you will not see the reverb mix setting change dynamically the way you would if you were turning a knob for that setting. 2) The pedal tweak will only alter the % of whatever you've manually set for the value you're tweaking. For example, if you've manually set the reverb mix to 2%, then the tweak pedal will only vary between 0% (when it is up) and 2% (when it is down), not 0-100%. If you manually set the reverb mix to 67%, then the tweak pedal will vary from 0-67%.

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