A markup language for geeky knitters
Just as I’m wrapping up work on my controlled vocabulary for
knitting (final project #2, almost done), I come across this: KnitML, the knitting markup
language. As the About page puts it,
Imagine being able to do the following for any KnitML-based pattern:
- Render a pattern in either written directions or a chart, dependent on a preference setting
- Render a pattern in any language, using conventions familiar to that language and dialect
- Validate that a pattern is physically possible to knit (eliminating some types of errata)
- Automatically convert English measurements to and from metric measurements
- Size a pattern up or down to any size, not just the sizes that come with the pattern
- Recalculate a pattern for your gauge rather than the one that came with the pattern
…among other things. You can view a proof-of-concept sock
pattern, all marked up in its angle-brackety glory. I’m intensely happy, both as a knitter and as a geek,
that such a project exists. If I had
time to sign up to beta-test Ravelry and join the KnitML group there, I
would. (Right now it’s on the ever-growing list of "things to do when I finish library school.")
Incidentally, I heard someone say recently that knitting had "skipped a
generation," meaning that it’s popular with younger people and their
grandmas, but not with the generation in between. I suspect that the
strong affinity of knitters and geeks, together with the expansion of
the web, has a lot to do with the recent resurgence.
Though I’d also like to claim geek-cred for older generations of
knitters, like my own grandmother, who designed her own patterns and would no doubt be very happy to see that I finally took up knitting.
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