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1993-12-22
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Knit V1.01
Written in Blitz Basic 2 by Don Finlay
Restrictions:
All rights to Knit are reserved.
No representation or warranties are made with respect to the
accuracy, reliability, performance, or operation of this software,
and all such use is at your own risk. The author does not assume
any responsiblity or liability whatsoever with respect to your
use of this software.
STARTUP
Knit may be started either from WorkBench via double clicking on the
icon or from the CLI. In either case the file "KnitTitle" must be in
the same directory as Knit or the program will not find it when needed
and you are apt to see the familiar red and black fireworks. For this
same reason if you wish to start Knit from the CLI you must first make
its home directory the current directory.
OVERVIEW
Knit is a program which will convert an IFF picture file
into a knitting pattern.
Knit should work with all the old screen resolutions.
That is to say, I do not have a machine with AGA chips and know
nothing of the new possible screen sizes or resolutions.
KNIT WILL ONLY ACCEPT A PICTURE WITH EIGHT OR LESS COLORS.
My wife, who is the knitter in the family and for whom the
program was written, assures me that eight colors is enough to
tax the patience of all but the most advanced knitters. This
should not present too great a problem as there are many
programs about which will convert even the most complex
pictures to any number of colors desired. The program was
tested with a picture of number three daughter which was
digitized with digi-view and converted from ham to eight colors
in Art Department Pro. To keep things simple you may wish to
draw an eight color work of art with the drawing program of
your choice.
Knit bases all of its calculations on the size of a
standard monitor screen which means that your finished knitting
should be about the size of your screen. This is not to say
that you can not use Knit if you have a large or small monitor.
It's just that the size you see is NOT what you will get.
Working your picture pattern into the front of a sweater
or the end of a scarf I leave to you. The possibilities are
too numerous to work out a contingency for each. The printout
resulting from the program will tell you how many stitches per
row are needed and how many rows are used. Again, the knitter
of the family assures me that it should not be difficult to
work out how the Knit pattern fits into any standard knitting
pattern. The knitter of the family may have a lot to answer
for!
JUMPING IN
When you run the program by double clicking on its icon,
you will first be greeted by the title screen. By the standard
procedure of holding down the right mouse button and moving up
into the title bar you will see the first menu. Perhaps in the
future this menu will offer more options. For now, however,
you have the choice of LOAD or QUIT. Choosing the latter
option will once again allow you to look upon your WorkBench
screen.
LOAD
By choosing this option a requester will allow you to
locate and load onto the screen the picture you wish to convert
to a knitting pattern. It may be worth mentioning once again
that the picture must be in the Amiga IFF format and must not
contain more than eight colors. Once the picture is loaded,
the original title/menu bar will disappear. By holding down
the right mouse button, however, you will find that you have
not been left to your own devices. A new menu will appear with
the headings of PROJECT, SETUP, COLOR and OUTPUT. This menu
bar will for the most part stay out of your way, but when ever
you need it simply use the right mouse button once again.
THE PROJECT MENU.................
PROJECT -- CROP
Use this option when you want to use only part of the
screen for your pattern. After choosing CROP you will be led
by small alert windows to choose a stitch size either in metric
or inches. (See Setup...Stitch Size below.) Having given Knit
the stitch information you will be instructed to hold down the
left mouse button at which point a box will appear. Continue
to hold down the left mouse button, move the mouse and you can
drag the box around the part of the screen you want to use.
When you release the mouse button the box will be drawn
permanently in its present location and the stitch grid will be
drawn in. From this point on, all calculations except color
changes will effect only the portion of the screen enclosed
within the crop box. Since the upper left corner of the crop
box is always at x=0, y=0 or the upper left corner of the
screen you must be sure that the part of the screen you want to
use is up where the crop box can get at it. If, for example,
you wanted to draw a small logo in a paint program and later
turn it into a knitting pattern, either draw it in the upper
left hand corner or move it there before you save it.
YOU DO NOT HAVE TO USE CROP! Knit will default to using the
whole screen if you have not told it to crop out a portion. If
you do wish to crop your picture, however, you must crop it
before you preform any SET UP or OUTPUT operations upon it.
Knit will not allow you to crop a picture after you have set
the stitch size.
PROJECT -- SAVE
Will bring up a requester so that you may save your
project to finish later or use again. SAVE will create two
files. Filename".knt" and Filename".dat" The file with the
.knt suffix is a screen save of the project. This is the one
you load back in if you want to work with the project again.
The .dat file contains all the settings you have decided upon
up to the point when the file was saved. If you load a .knt
file, Knit will read the .dat file and set things up just as
you left them. I might mention, that to load a .knt file, or
any other file for that matter, you must quit and restart the
program in order to get back to the screen with the load menu
option.
PROJECT -- QUIT
Welcome to WorkBench!
THE SET UP MENU ..................
SET UP -- STITCH SIZE
Because of the numerous wool thickness and knitting needle
sizes stitch sizes can vary considerably. Knit, of course,
must know the stitch size upon which to base it calculations.
Choosing the Stitch Size menu option will bring up a small
requester which will give you a choice of basing your pattern
on inches or metric divisions. Picking eater option with the
mouse will switch the requester to one which will ask you to
input the number of stitches per inch or per two centimeters.
It is important to realize at this point that the more stitches
per unit you use, the more detailed your finished product will
be. Nine stitches per unit seems to be small enough to give a
fair resolution in the knitted product. Again, there is no
reason why one could not set the program to do a very detailed
pattern of say ten stitches per inch and then do the actual
knitting with a yarn and needles which gave an actual yield of
five stitches per inch. The finished product would, of course,
be roughly twice the size of the monitor picture but the detail
would be good. What ever stitch size you choose, when you
input it and hit return, a grid of that size will be drawn upon
the screen to represent the stitches.
SET UP -- BLOCK PATTERN
This one sends Knit off scanning the screen and working
out the dominant color in each square of the stitch grid. It
then fills the entire square with that color just as a stitch
would do. This process takes a few moments but is quite quick
when you realize that the program is checking every pixel on
the screen and comparing it with its near neighbors. Just sit
back and watch it work.
THE COLOR MENU .......................
Any windows which open on the main picture screen during
any of the color editing procedures may be moved about to get
them out of the way for a better view of your picture. Simply
move the mouse pointer to the top of what ever window you want
to move, hold down the left mouse button and drag the window to
a new location.
COLOR -- EDIT PIC COLORS
Use this menu choice if you wish to change any of the
colors in your basic picture. I would think that the main
reason for changing the picture color would be to make it more
closely match the color of available yarn. What ever your
reason, however, if you choose "Edit Pic Colors" you will be
presented with a small window which is divided into squares
each of which contains one of your basic picture colors.
Clicking the mouse on one of the color squares will open
another window with the conventional R G B color sliders.
Another small square which will contain the color you are
editing will also appear in the original window. Simply change
the color by moving the sliders one at a time with the mouse.
When you are satisfied click on the "OK" gadget and the slider
window will close. If you want to edit another color just
click on it with the mouse and the slider window will open
again. When your editing is complete click the mouse on the
close gadget in the upper left hand corner of the edit window.
COLOR -- EDIT GRID COLOR
If the stitch grid is drawn in a color which is hard to
see or if you should want to make it a little less contrasting,
"Edit Grid Color" will let you change it. Again just move the
sliders with the left mouse button until you are happy then
click on "OK".
COLOR -- EDIT STITCH COLOR
This menu choice in effect turns your mouse pointer into a
"fill" tool. Placing the mouse pointer inside one of the grid
squares and hitting the left mouse button will fill said square
with what ever color you are working with. You must first, of
course, choose the color from the edit window which opened when
you selected "Edit Stitch Color" from the "Color" menu. Again,
a small square will open in the center of the edit window and
will contain the current choice of color. You may change your
working color as often as you like. This will allow you to
fine tune your stitch pattern and to round off the circles and
square up the squares. If you are into masochism you could
import a blank screen with an eight color palette and by using
"Edit Stitch Color" paint your pattern stitch by stitch.
COLOR -- UNDO EDIT
This is used to undo stitch edit only, and at the present
time will undo only the last stitch you have changed. I fear
that after having gone to the trouble to build this feature
into Knit I find it just as easy to change the edit color and
re-edit the offending stitch. Such is life!
THE OUTPUT MENU ................
OUTPUT -- COLORS
Since the printout of your pattern will be composed of
symbols for the different colors you must tell Knit what you
would like the colors to be named. This is where green becomes
"Lime Moonlight", or if you are less poetic "green". You will
be given a window with a series of color samples besides an
equal number of boxes into which you enter the color names.
When you have dutifully entered all the color names the window
will close and you are ready to .....
OUTPUT -- PRINT
Make sure your printer is connected and on and you are
away.
I hope that there will be those who will find Knit usfull
and I would be very interested in seeing any finished work
developed with knit.
Please forward any bug reports to:
Don Finlay
105 Norwood Rd.
Bayswater, Auckland
New Zealand
Phone 09 445 3699
CompuServe ID# 100033,655