SEW, DST and EXP supported

I found some descriptions of additional embroidery formats on the web: Janome’s SEW, which is a simplified JEF format (actually its predecessor), Melco’s EXP and Tajima’s DST: Both are mainly used for industrial embroidery machines and don’t hold any color information.

Both plugins (StitchBuddy-QL and StitchBuddy-MD) are updated to read this formats.

StitchBuddy-QL / -MD released

I rewrote all code to support more file formats and enable future enhancements, now it’s a kind of embroidery framework I’ll use for upcoming applications. The first steps are releases of StitchBuddy-QL and StitchBuddy-MD to preview PES and JEF embroidery files in the Finder and search for them with Spotlight.

I registered the domain stitchbuddy.de and created a small product website based on Apple’s iWeb, featuring some descriptions, FAQs, and screenshots. Both plugins can be downloaded from this site and used for free.

The developments of JEFview and PESviewQL are discontinued.

PESviewQL released

After JEFview’s release a lot of people asked me to support more file formats. The highest demand was for Brother’s PES. Now I duplicated the code of JEFview, wrote a new import routine for PES files and PESviewQL is released. Not a way to cover multiple file formats, but a first step in this direction.

PESviewQL can be downloaded and used for free.

Bundle identifier fixed

I messed up the bundle identifier in info.plist, which might cause collisions: corrected.

Error handling enhanced

Now JEFview will provide better error descriptions if a file could not be read (to be checked with Console.app).

JEFview released

My wife bought a Janome MC350E last year and started to collect embroidery files. It’s easy to transfer them from her Apple iBook to the embroidery machine as the Janome supports USB memory sticks: Just plug the stick into the iBook, copy JEF files into the right folder and you’re done.

Unfortunately previewing designs isn’t that easy: Although the touchscreen of the Janome shows thumbnail images, there’s no way to identify designs in the Finder of Mac OS X.

I used the Christmas season to dive into Objective-C, Cocoa and Quick Look development, and finally JEFview is released. It integrates as a Quick Look plugin into Mac OS X, and now JEF embroideries show their design in the Finder and can be previewed by hitting the spacebar.

JEFview can be downloaded and used for free.