Marking boundaries and matching patterns with color (feature request)

For analysis purposes it is sometimes useful to highlight candidate field/record sequences (for example the beginning of chunks in a PNG file, or the PNG file header itself in a larger binary). Or any other sequence really. If there are several different sequences, then it might be necessary to specify a colour to go with each type of match.

Another option could be to toggle a status-bar item saying how far the cursor is from the previous (say, red) marker, and how many bytes from the cursor to the next such marker.

Maybe users could read in a short text file where each line defines a byte sequence/regex/whatever, giving each an optional colour and optional label (ie. FF F1 60, 'start of zlib stream, standard compression')? This would make repeated checking for common patterns, embedded file formats, etc, much easier.

No files, tests, or entry points are named. First clarify whether the goal is colored byte-pattern matches, configurable markers and labels, status-bar distance information, or some combination, then define the input format and acceptance criteria before locating the relevant hex-editor components.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.