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Comment by AlotOfReading | Hacker News Reader

Stitches are load-bearing, so specifying a bartack or a flatlock seems pretty important to unambiguously specifying a garment. Along the same lines, I don't see a way to specify hardware that isn't for closures, e.g. the rivets used to reinforce denim pockets.

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I know, I make clothes too. Probably unlike the creator of this thing.

But the comment I was responding to seemed to be using "stitch" in the way knitters use it, not the way sewists use it. No pattern drafting system can represent the stitches necessary to create a panel of knit fabric, that's simply not the level of abstraction they work at.

This thing isn't good but not for the reason of being unable to represent a one-strand mitten or whatever, which is what I think they were getting at.

Is this even able to specify patterns? Or is it just how to assemble the pieces of cut cloth?

Well, I actually had two interrelated thoughts and because of proximity I think I confused things. I guess what I was thinking was "garments are constructed not of "panels" but of threads of a given material which can be abstractly thought of as being panels when woven or knitted, but ..." and from there I thought of failure modes, like the fact that this doesn't have a way of specifying straight vs zigzag stitches, which doesn't have a way of specifying things that are not joined together via stitching panels together, etc. Like, I don't think this can specify a pair of jeans, because the hem of a jean requires a chain stitch at the bottom, which isn't unambiguously defined. This project feels like it devalues the complexity of something that is one of the defining features of civilization.

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