Snow Leopard bug fix

Mac OS X 10.6 aka „Snow Leopard“ was released by Apple, and users reported StitchBuddy and its plugins to work well. Anyway, after I received the OS update for my new MacBook Pro I realized a bug in StitchBuddy v1.2: When zooming into a design no scrollbars became visible. This issue will be addressed by a complete new zooming in the next major release, which is already under construction. In the meantime I disabled the „auto-hide“ feature of the scrollbars, now they are visible all the time, and StitchBuddy v1.2.1 is released as an interims bug fix.

More Pfaff formats

After the last feature update I focused on file formats in the last weeks. Now all StitchBuddy components read Pfaff’s KSM, PCS, PCQ and PCD files, and PCS embroideries can also be written. While KSM is once again an industrial format without color information, PCQ and PCD are used for small hoopless embroideries, e. g. at a hemline. I’ve learned that there are different PCD formats, text-based and binary ones, and StitchBuddy can read the binary type, only.

Thread charts and VP3

The first (free) update of StitchBuddy changes the handling of thread colors: The color picker of Mac OS X is used to select colors (it was just a list of items before), and I updated the internal representation of colors: It’s possible to change the thread charts of a design, and even EXP/DST files can be colorized. In addition designs can be rotated by any angle,q and Pfaff’s VP3 embroidery format can be read, now.

Both plugins are updated as well to support the new thread colors and VP3 embroideries.

Stand-alone application StitchBuddy

Yippee! One year after the first JEFview version the stand-alone StitchBuddy application is born!

Its main purpose is to preview changes of a design’s thread colors, but I added some more features: Designs can be flipped and rotated by 45° and it’s possible to center a design in its hoop. Based on the StitchBuddy framework the application can read JEF, PES, SEW, EXP, and DST embroidery files. Unfortunately I didn’t find enough information to write PES, so saving designs is limited to JEF, EXP, and DST.

StitchBuddy can be purchased for USD 25 / EUR 20.