Sublime Forum

Viewing image file contents as hex or plain text

#1

Hello everyone,

Just signed in to make this suggestion…

Sublime Text is primarily a text editor, right? That’s what it does, that’s what it should primarily be doing. It can be fully fledged with many extras, like multiple cursors and all, I’m all fine with that. In fact, that is the reason why I stick with it in the first place.

But in the end, it should be a text editor. That’s its purpose.

Yet, Sublime Text 3, by default, displays image files just like an image viewer would. Nice thinking there, but no. Sublime Text 3, as a text editor, should be displaying it as a plain text file, preferably rather as hex. It should even do this by default.

It’s all fine that Sublime Text 3 is loaded with the functionality to view image files as images, but it should just be a secondary option. It should not be the primary option, and definitely not the only option.

Please, do correct this mistake. At least put a menu option, something like: File > Reopen As > Hex, File > Reopen As > Plain Text and File > Reopen As > Image.

I am changing the extension of a file to view it as plain text in a text editor. This is absolutely inconvenient.

Thanks for reading,
ThoAppelsin

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#2

I second this.

I can’t think of any circumstance under which I want an image to view as an image in my text editor - but if for some reason other people find this weird feature useful, at least make it optional so I can turn it off.

Curious what else is planned - when will I be able to play my music via Sublime Text?

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#3

I just ran into this now with v4169. It didn’t always do this. In my case, the file is huge so Sublime just sits there for 20+ min with “Loading image…” Can I roll back to get rid of this annoying feature? Having to rename the extension is unacceptable.

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#4

The latest build’s (4180) changelog lists the following:

  • Added File > Open file as Text/Image for explicitly opening a file as an image or as text

However, I don’t see such an item on the File menu on macOS. And when I use the regular File > Open… dialogue on an image, it still opens it as an image. However, I noticed that after opening the image file as an image, File > Reopen File as Text item becomes available, and when clicked, it does as it says.

And on that image file opened as text, one now has the File > Reopen File as Image item to get back to the image view.

This is precisely as I suggested. Thanks a lot Sublime Text Team! I am very happy to see this implemented.

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