Submitted the changes I had previously made.

.envrc

@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+source .venv/bin/activate

hello.txt

@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Hello!

text_codecs/23comp.py

@@ -0,0 +1,47 @@
+from easybits import Bits
+import codecs
+
+def register_codec(encode, decode, name):
+    """Registers a codec so that it can later be used to encode
+    or decode strings and bytes.
+    """
+    def encode_wrapper(text):
+        return encode(text), len(text)
+    def decode_wrapper(data):
+        return decode(data), len(data)
+    def search_for_codec(query):
+        if query == name:
+            return codecs.CodecInfo(encode_wrapper, decode_wrapper, name=name)
+    codecs.register(search_for_codec)
+
+com_neg= {"the": -1, "and": -2, 
+            "this": -3, "or": -4, "not": -5, "that": -6, 
+            "to": -7, "from": -8, "in": -9, "at": -10, "of": -11,
+            "because": -12, "but": -13, "be": -14,
+            "now": -15, "then": -16, "while": -17}
+
+def common_encode(commonword):
+    return com_neg.get(commonword)
+
+def encode(text):
+    result = Bits()
+    for char in text:
+        if text in com_neg:
+            result= common_encode(text)
+        else:
+            try:
+                b = Bits(char, encoding='ascii')
+            except UnicodeEncodeError:
+                b = Bits('?')
+        result = result.concat(b[1:])
+    return result.bytes
+
+def decode(data):
+    bits = Bits(bytes(data))
+    text = ""
+    for i in range(-17, len(bits), 7):
+        byte = Bits('0').concat(bits[i:i+7])
+        text += Bits(byte).ascii
+    return text
+
+register_codec(encode, decode, "ascii7")

text_codecs/alphanumeric.py

@@ -1,10 +1,29 @@
 import string
 import codecs
-from custom_codecs.register import register_codec
+#from text_codecs.register import register_codec
 from easybits import Bits
 
 allowed_characters = string.ascii_letters + string.digits
 
+import codecs
+
+def register_codec(encode, decode, name):
+    """Registers a codec so that it can later be used to encode
+    or decode strings and bytes.
+    """
+    def encode_wrapper(text):
+        return encode(text), len(text)
+
+    def decode_wrapper(data):
+        return decode(data), len(data)
+
+    def search_for_codec(query):
+        if query == name:
+            return codecs.CodecInfo(encode_wrapper, decode_wrapper, name=name)
+
+    codecs.register(search_for_codec)
+
+
 def encode(text):
     """A (very) lossy encoder which only saves ASCII letters, numbers, and spaces.
     Everything else is discarded. All whitespace (e.g. tabs) is converted into spaces.

text_codecs/ascii7.py

@@ -1,6 +1,25 @@
-from custom_codecs.register import register_codec
+#from text_codecs.register import register_codec
 from easybits import Bits
 
+import codecs
+
+def register_codec(encode, decode, name):
+    """Registers a codec so that it can later be used to encode
+    or decode strings and bytes.
+    """
+    def encode_wrapper(text):
+        return encode(text), len(text)
+
+    def decode_wrapper(data):
+        return decode(data), len(data)
+
+    def search_for_codec(query):
+        if query == name:
+            return codecs.CodecInfo(encode_wrapper, decode_wrapper, name=name)
+
+    codecs.register(search_for_codec)
+
+
 def encode(text):
     """An encoder which only handles ASCII: non-ASCII characters
     are replaced with '?'. Once all the characters are ASCII, this encoder
@@ -30,4 +49,4 @@ def decode(data):
         text += Bits(byte).ascii
     return text
 
-register_codec(encode, decode, "ascii7")
+register_codec(encode, decode, "ascii7")