Knitter / News: Recent posts

This release fixes several critical pattern bugs that crept in along with the new parser. All patterns that ship (except for KnitML patterns) should render correctly now, so if you've had trouble with patterns not rendering, please try out this release. The OSX release should be built for 10.5 compatibility, so please let me know if this release works better or worse on your version of OSX.

This release includes the installer fix that has been preventing 0.5.x from working correctly on Windows. If you've been experiencing the "msvcr100d.dll missing" error message, this release should fix the problem. I've also moved the log files to more acceptable locations (see the main page for more info). There is still a bug in yarn handling that prevents certain patterns from rendering; this will be fixed in the next release.

This release has some significant usability improvements along with a few critical bug fixes. This version should fix a WindowManager divide-by-zero crash on OSX 10.6.4, so if you were having trouble with that, please try again with this version. Also, there's a brand new parser built with flex/bison. This means that pattern parsing is more robust, and it also opens the door for the next big feature: editing of patterns in-place. The old 'new stitches' tab has been completely removed; just type your new pattern (or load then edit an existing pattern) into the text box at the bottom. The pattern will be parsed as you type, providing error hints and syntax highlighting. Hit the Sync button to see your changes rendered.... read more

On a quick turn the latest release is out. This is mainly a bugfix release. The GUI has been reorganized just a little, and that irritating crash at program shutdown is fixed. A crash resulting from unrecognized stitches has also been fixed; all the included patterns should render at least something now. Tooltips have been added to a lot of controls, so first-time usability should improve.

As always, please file any bugs that you find.

After a mad dash of activity over the last few weeks, 0.5.2 is finally out. This version includes some GUI additions, including the ability to select which tabs show in the sidebar. Performance should have significantly improved by reducing the rendering frame rate, and several threading bugs have been fixed (though several still remain).

However, the biggest news for this release is a new OSX build. The release has been tested thoroughly on OSX as well as XP and Linux this time around, so hopefully installation should go smoothly. The OSX build is designed for Snow Leopard (10.6), may work (but is untested) on 10.5, and is unlikely to work on 10.4.... read more

The next version is out with several bugfixes. For one, hitting the 'Erase Pattern' button and then importing a new pattern will not slow the simulation down like it did before. Also, the simulation stability has been significantly improved, and the mass and size of the simulation nodes is now configurable through the GUI. There are also a few fixes for single-precision ODE and reduced-depth z-buffers.

After more than a year of inactivity, the new Knitter release is out. This release uses CMake to generate its build system. The biggest impact of this is that the Windows release is now compiled with Visual Studio, resulting in a smaller and faster binary than before. It will also be easier to generate OSX images in the near future. The old configure.in and other auto* related files are still in the repository, but I will delete them if CMake continues to work as well as it is.... read more

This release contains some major feature enhancements that have been a long time coming. The biggest and most visible are the 'tube' rendering mode, which finally brings true 3D rendering of your pattern, and the debug interface and syntax highlighting in the total pattern tab. Lots of other changes went into this release, including major architectural changes to the physical model. In addition, this release uses multiple threads to run the simulation, which should improve GUI responsiveness.

This release is a major bugfix release for Windows and a GUI cleanup for all platforms. The toolbar has been re-organized based on feedback from 0.3.0, and failure to load the stitch library (which hasn't been packaged in the installer until now) will now result in an error. In addition, users can now load a new (or reload the existing) stitch library from the File menu. There have been several other more minor fixes, so check it out.

The 0.3.0 release had some bugs in the Windows installer that have been fixed. All (hopefully) of the required libraries have now been included, so installing on a fresh machine should work.

The new 0.3.0 release adds the most (and only) requested feature, and something that I've always wanted for Knitter: the ability to select and drag stitches. There have also been a few bug-fixes, as always, and the GUI has been updated. Fabric is now rendered by default using loops that attempt to mimic the look of the actual yarn, rather than wireframe (although wireframe is still selectable from the new toolbar to speed things up a little).

This release includes many graphical improvements, including support for yarn colors and guages, setting the background color of the rendering, faster rendering, support for antialiasing, and several bugfixes.

Version 0.2.2 is out, which includes many bug fixes and stability improvements. Splint has been used to detect and fix quite a few bugs and to generally improve code quality. The GUI has also been updated; the behavior of the program when the 'knit' button is hit should be somewhat more intuitive now.

The 0.2.1 release is out, which fixes a lot of problems with OSX (or any Unicode build). If you were experiencing lots of crashes, please try the new release. Also, changing the gravity field now correctly updates the gravity, and a few memory leaks have been plugged.

The latest Knitter release adds native support for Mac OS X. It also uses wxWidgets rather than GTK for its GUI, so you may notice some minor GUI changes. Otherwise, there have been few changes to the underlying code. The old gui files referencing GTK are still available in CVS, but will be removed soon. They have already been removed from the source distributions. Stability has also been increased in the version; several crashes related to lack of error handling have been fixed.... read more

The next version of Knitter (0.2.0) will use wxWidgets instead of GTK for its GUI. The main advantage is that the Windows installer will be much smaller, and a new OSX port will be possible. Check out the project homepage for a simple screenshot of the OSX port.

The new 0.1.0 release is out with ODE running the backend physics engine. Simulations are considerably more realistic now, but existing patterns will need to add the fix(x,y,z) keyword to make sure that the pattern doesn't fall off the viewing screen when it's created. The stitch library has also been moved into stitches.xml, allowing users to add new stitches and modify existing stitches without recompiling.

KnitML is now supported with the 0.0.2 release. Also supported is the ability to import and export patterns (as .pat files) in the native Knitter language. At the moment, when a KnitML files is loaded, it is converted into a .pat file, and the .pat file is then loaded.

For KnitML support to work, please download pattern.xsd and pattern-header-types.xsd from the KnitML project and put it in the working directory for Knitter. The next release will have these files included, along with some example XML and pattern files.

The first version of Knitter is available. This initial release is functional, though not very pretty. Language examples will be posted on the website soon. This version doesn't support KnitML yet, but the next version will.