Saturday, January 27, 2007

Well, There You Go

With a bit more playing around, I’ve found a couple of little things that make me cranky about Knit Visualizer. I know the other day I said it was almost perfecto, but I’ve changed my mind. It’s a little more quirky than that. For one, the changes that you make when you edit the legend and text pattern in the Print or Export window aren’t permanent. If you close the Print window, the next time you go to print the same pattern, everything is back to the way the program generated it in the first place. Humph…your changes should be saved with the program, no? Yes. Your notes that accompany the file (Properties) are permanent unless you edit them in the Print window. Any changes there disappear like all the others. Note to Self: to hang on to anything permanently, put it in the Properties notes and save it with the chart.

Another thing is the reason why I felt the need to edit the pattern in the first place — it automatically includes the “no stitches” in the text. Why? Do I need to see:

R1 (RS): k4, (No Stitch) 6 times, k1, yo, k1, yo, k2, (No Stitch) 3 times

When I could just see:

R1 (RS): k5, yo, k1, yo, k2

I mean, how do you execute a (No Stitch) 3 times anyway? No Stitches should be completely ignored except as placeholders in the chart. After all, they don’t really exist. Luckily I pretty much ignore the written pattern anyway, unless I need some clarification of the chart. My new workaround is to open the Print window, edit the pattern, copy it and paste it into the Properties notes where it will remain as long as I remember to save the chart file! Then when I go to print the chart, I turn off the pattern option while keeping the notes. It shouldn’t be that complicated, should it? Or maybe my wants are just different from that envisioned by the programmer. We are trying to get away from the written text patterns after all. Otherwise why do we need the charts?

One last quibble is the default folder where KV wants to save my files. I prefer them in a folder in My Documents rather than in the Program Files/Knit Visualizer/Charts/folder. But it doesn’t remember my path the next time I start the program and automatically goes back to its own. I can’t find a way to change the default. Is there a way through Windows XP? Most programs ask if you want to save to the last folder you saved to even if you close the program and restart it, but not KV. [Edited to say that I was wrong. It does save to the last folder. Don't know why it didn't when I was testing it.] One thing it does do though, and the jury is still out on this, is automatically open the last saved file when you start the program. I think I would prefer that it started with a blank and waited for you to either open the file you want to work on or start a new one. Or give you the option to choose what happens when you start the program.

On my wish list, it might be nice to be able to have more than one chart open at a time for comparisons. You can get around that by starting a new KV at the same time as one is already running. It allows you to run more than one iteration of it.

Another wish is, although there is a way to put a border separating areas of your chart, it would be nice to have a way to designate the repeat and then view it repeated X number of times horizontally and/or vertically automatically. Then the pattern text should automatically designate the repeat in the instructions with brackets or whatever. Am I starting to ask for too much? However, weaving programs have this feature so it’s something I’m used to. Since it’s helpful to see more than one repeat in most instances you have to specify the width at the start or add the rows and columns individually later.

Enough of Knit Visualizer for the moment. We headed out in the gorgeous sunshine today for another one of our marathon walks. We went down to False Creek’s southern seawall:


And followed it along to Granville Island (under the bridge in the distance there) where we bought lunch and took it outside to the square by the water. Dodging the usual hungry bird population (seagulls, pigeons, starlings and one Canada goose) we gingerly sat on a bench in the sun and ate while a seagull stared me in the eye and dared me to drop something. Anything. Unfortunately (for him anyway) he flew away before a few bits or my taco salad fell off my plastic fork so an enterprising starling got it instead. Talk about your feathered rats! Oh yeah. The unfeathered and scaly-tailed variety live down there as well. Luckily most of the tourists never notice. It would kind of ruin the funky artsy/craftsy ambiance for them, I’m sure.

It was getting busier so we elbowed our way inside the market (here showing just one teeny tiny corner):


We bought white prawns for dinner tonight and double-smoked bacon for breakfast tomorrow. Yum! That plus a few veggies which included organic purple potatoes and a honking great yellow turnip for T-Man (who loves his tatties and neeps — must be his Scottish ancestry showing) ended up making for a rather heavy backpack to lug home uphill. We traded it back and forth between us as we headed home. Tomorrow it’s supposed to be still sunny so we’re going out to a bird sanctuary with the Ninja and family to feed the ducks. Gotta get out while the weather is good! Winter isn’t over yet, even though the witch hazel is out and my hazelnut tree is covered in catkins.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I can't imagine using that program, I have enough challenges starting a new blog. Saturday was a fabulous day.