Color Inkle Loom

Your Atari master weaver

by GERALD M. HAGOPIAN

Design intricate 39-thread weaving patterns for the inkle loom with this BASIC program.  (If you're a weaver, inkle loom won't sound strange.)  Color Inkle Loom works on all Atari computers with 24K memory. 24K cassette, 32K disk

Serious weavers regularly face the process of selecting colors and patterns for their various looms. And as you know, displaying intricate color patterns is a job that's duck soup for the Atari. With the Color Inkle Loom program, you can design patterns for use with the inkle loom which-in weaver's jargon-is a two-harness plain weave loom.
    This program should be a good start for Antic readers who might wish to develop design software for looms that are more complicated than the widely used inkle.

ATARI WEAVING
Type in Listing 1 and check it with TYPO II. SAVE it before you RUN it.
    After the opening screen, you'll see a menu. You can choose to Create a new weaving, Save a weaving, Load a previous weaving, or Exit the program.
    If you are creating a new weaving, you'll be asked for the number of threads per harness, up to 39 each. After typing a number, you'll be asked if you're sure. Type [Y] to continue, anything else to go back.
    Then choose colors, starting with harness #1, thread #1, followed by harness #1, thread #2, and so on. In each case, you'll be asked for the color letter-which you'll take from the marked band of colors across the screen. Once again, you'll be asked if you're sure. Type [Y] to continue, anything else to go back.
    When you're done choosing colors, you'll be asked if you're ready to weave. Type [Y] to continue. You can start weaving, or change the intensity of the colors you've chosen. With the spectrum band's range of 16 colors and the Change Color Value option, you can produce any of the Atari's colors.

Gerald M. Hagopian is a freelance consulting designer working with consumer products and interior design.

Listing 1   INKLLOOM.BAS Download