Open Source Knitting

On this page you find an overview of FOSSASIA Open Source Knitting Projects and how to start to get involved.

• Communication
• Knitting Projects
  • kniteditor
  • knittingpattern
  • AYABInterface
  • circle-knitting
• How to Contribute
• Other Projects
• Inactive Projects

Communication

Slack: FOSSASIA has a Slack to chat in the community. You can use the main channel or #knitting. The current project lead of the knitting project is github and on Slack under the name “niccokunzmann”. Feel free to get in touch directly for questions.

Gitter: We have a Gitter chat which you can join as well at gitter.im/fossasia/knitapps

Mailing List: There is a mailing list for knitting applications for questions and ideas. You can also join the FOSSASIA mailing list.

Knitting Projects

kniteditor

The Knit Editor is an editor for the knit exchange format. It allows creating digital knit works from images and knitting it with several knitting machines. This kniteditor is developed together with All Yarns Are Beautiful. You can download the releases and install them.

Read about the project:

• blog post about this project.

Repository: GitHub

Tutorials: Videos on YouTube

Related Projects: knittingpattern, AYABInterface

knittingpattern

The knittingpattern is a Python library for an exchange format for knit work. It allows specifying how to knit a particular piece of work.

Read about the project:

• blog post about this project.

Repository: GitHub

Tutorial: Videos on YouTube

Related Projects: AYABInterface, kniteditor

AYABInterface

The AYABInterface is used by the Knit Editor to convert knittingpatterns into machine instructions. It can be used standalone without these other projects. You can

Read about the project:

• blog post about this project
• The new AYABInterface module

Repository: GitHub

Tutorial: Videos on Youtube

Related Projects: knittingpattern, kniteditor

circle-knitting

The goal of this project is to develop a knitting machine that is entirely made from plastic. An enhanced model can include a micro PC that can control the machine using our Open Source knitting software. This project can enable people to print out a plastic on a 3D printer. This project implements the idea to code a circular knitting machine.

Repository: GitHub

How to Contribute

Translate: A majority of people on earth do not speak English. By translating software, you make it accessible to thousands of people. You can add translations to these projects:

• kniteditor
  • A video on how to translate
  • Blogpost about localization implementation

Improve Metrics: Improving code metrics requires coding but not the understanding of how the code works. You learn how to set up this specific environment, fix some code and while doing this, you read it and get familiar with it. When your pull request is merged, you have contributed to the health of the project. Some of the repositories have code metrics like code coverage and code quality. They can be improved easily. E.g. in this example you can find this error:

 	        bbox = list(map(lambda f: f*zoom, layout.bounding_box))
    missing whitespace around arithmetic operator

This can fix this by adding spaces around the operator.

Solve Issues: All the projects have “issues” attached to them. They show bugs and feature requests. A solved issue improves the life of somebody on earth. When solving the issue, you are introduced to the development process of the project and learn how to adapt the project to your needs. Issues can be found in the issue tracker of github. The badge above links to the overview of all listed projects. If you find an issue which interests you, please comment that you would like to work on it. This way, you get help and it is not done twice. Code should be documented and tested. Consider trying out documentation driven development, Test-First and test-driven development.

Other Projects

This section contains links and related projets and work in the field of knitting. Other overview sites are listed here. The objective is to ease exploring the network of people and projects.

• Community Connections
• Blogpost about Designaknit

Inactive Projects

These projects are a bit older, obsolete or not maintained any more.

• knitpat -knitpat contains a pattern definition format for knit work. It is the predecessor of the knittingpattern library.
• knitserver - Knitserver is a Knitlib client that provides REST API endpoints for knitting machine software and control. Knitserver is designed to interact with Knitweb. Repository: GitHub
• knitweb - knitweb is an app frontend and backend that works together with the knitlib server and uses the knitpat format. Repository: GitHub
• knitlib - Knitlib is a library designed to support the operation of varied knitting machines, mechanisms, and hacks. Knitlib is based on projects like AYAB, PDD, and KnitterStream to control knitting machines. Knitlib features a plugin system for knitting machines and implements an API to control machines’ operation, knitting jobs and knitting patterns. The software is based on Python. There also is a Web API. Among the primary tasks is to develop plugins based on this solution to add support for more machines. Repository: GitHub

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