STITCH MATRIX Copyright 1988 Chet Walters Welcome to Stitch Matrix! If you do counted cross stitch, mosaic tiling, needlepoint, hook rugs, or any other craft that uses designs illustrated with graph paper, this is the program for you! But, we want you to know that this is a preliminary version ONLY. Stitch Matrix is in the public domain and can be distributed in it's original form freely to whomever and wherever you like. The copyright for the Stitch Matrix name and color symbol designs will remain the property of Chet Walters. But again, we must emphasize that Stitch Matrix is distributed in cooperation with NEO STAG and CHQ BBS as part of a market survey. If you would like to see a fully implemented design program with the following projected features: 320 by 400 DESIGN CAPABILITY! PROVISION FOR QUARTER/HALF/BACK STITCHES! BLOCK SAVE/LOAD/COPY INVERT BLOCK LEFT/RIGHT UP/DOWN SAVE/LOAD BORDER WITH USER BORDER DESIGN! TYPE IN SAMPLER STYLE FONTS! WITH USER FONT DESIGN! USER DEFINABLE SYMBOL TABLE FULL FEATURED ZOOM COMPATIBILITY WITH ANY PRINTER! AUTO DMC (R) FLOSS CHARTING AUTO CENTERING MARKS USER DEFINED GRID DISPLAY GRID ON/OFF LINE/CIRCLE/POLYGON/BOX etc. AND MUCH MORE! send a post card to: NEO STAG / CHQ BBS PO Box 45 Girard, OH 44420-0045 The author feels that the market for such a design program is too limited. With the equipment needed (ie ATARI 520 or 1040 color, dot matrix printer, and someone interested in producing designs) the author does not think that the FOUR MONTH or more development time would be worth while. But you can change all that! Send us a card or letter expressing your desire to see a fully implemented program with the above listed features and maybe we can change Chet's mind about this! Include your return address and you will be sent a reply with the results of the poll so far, and also a notification if and when the full blown version is available. Projected price: $15 - 20 dollars. If our efforts are successful, the package will contain a starter cross stitch set and a number of ready to print and stitch or hook or tile designs! Again, it all depends upon YOU! Send us a card! Of course, you're probably wondering just how to use the current version of Stitch Matrix! It's so easy, there's really no need for any extensive dox. Stitch Matrix will load any lo-res Degas pic (see note), compressed or uncompressed from which you select a block to print as your stitch design. At present, it works only with color 520 or 1040 ST's and Epson compatible dot matrix printers. At the title screen, press any key to load a pic. Once the pic is loaded, you're asked to click on the color you wish to be the background (eg the fabric, or blank part). Click on SURE IS if you've chosen the proper one. You are then presented with a moveable box which is initially a full printout page in size, 80 across by 90 down. You can stretch or shrink the box to your own specs by holding down the LEFT mouse button and moving the mouse in the direction desired. Size the box and move it about until you've framed what you wish to print. Press either the RIGHT mouse button or ANY key. Turn on your printer, make sure there's enough paper, choose your selection of Draft or Final from the printer box and slicker than snail's trails, it's done! Once printing has finished, a box of the colors used along with a reference number is displayed. You can hold up your floss to the screen for best match while filling in the symbol & color chart that has been printed (we plan to do this automatically for you in the finished version). That's it! Some hints: Unlike Degas, the box frame used with Stitch Matrix is NOT inclusive. In other words, only what appears INSIDE the box will be printed. What appears under the lines or outside the box does not print. This, of course, means that you cannot print an ENTIRE screen as the pixels under the lines are truncated. Your maximum grid therefore is 318 wide by 198 high. We recommend that you use the ANY KEY feature once you've sized and placed your box. Those little mice are cute enough, but for critical movements (or non-movements for that matter) they are hard to keep steady when pressing their buttons. Use the left mouse button to size your box. Then move the mouse to place the frame accurately, centering it around your design. Then gently remove your hand from the mouse and press the SPACE BAR to exit without disturbing the placement. This trick yields the best results. Always set your printer to top of form before beginning a print session. A single page printout can be a maximum count of 80 wide by 90 high. Anything larger will be printed on several pages according to a "best fit" algortihm. You can then clip and paste these pages together for the complete design. A full screen will use 13 sheets of paper counting the symbol legend. The finished paste up of a full screen printout is approximately 34 inches by 19 inches. While this may seem large, it does approximate the size of actual graph paper and provides for a very "readable" design. If you think about it, a 300 by 200 design represents a huge amount of stitch work. Designs normally are only about a fourth of this size. Many designs are only 40 by 60 or so. Keep this in mind when you are creating a design pattern with Degas. When using Degas for preparing a design for use with Stitch Matrix, it's best to work with zoom and a pixel at a time. This yields the best results, but is sometimes difficult to work. That is why we need a fully implemented design program so don't forget ..... DROP US A LINE!!!!!!!! Donations for Stitch Matrix as it stands are gratefully accepted. A donation will get you on our Beta Test list if and when we decide to release a fully implemented design version. We also welcome suggestions on things you would like to see included in the final version. We are here for YOU! NEO STAG / CHQ BBS PO BOX 45 GIRARD, OH 44420-0045 BBS # 216-758-0284 It has been brought to our attention that if you are using a STAR GEMINI printer, you must set the DIP switch so that it is in the IBM mode. STAR mode will not perform the n/216 line feeds that STITCH_X needs to make a nice printout. This will be fixed in the final version of course. **NOTE: STITCH_X v1.20 will now load not only DEGAS pics, but NEO and TINY pics as well! To load these other formats, they must be low res pics and the filenames must have the extenders to match their storage format. If you wish to load a NEO pic, it must have the extender "NEO". To load a TINY pic, it must have the extender "TNY". Any discrepencies may well crash the program. STITCH_X v1.20 also has been modified so that it will print both the actual stitch design and the color symbol table properly on STAR printers. We have recently learned that CYBER PAINT from ANTIC has an excellent full featured zoom and also saves pics in DEGAS format. It has promise as THE development tool for stitch designs. Try it!