Designing Celtic knots with Knotter

When Linux users think of vector graphics, Inkscape usually comes to mind. Knotter [1] is different: It was created especially to create Celtic knots (Figure 1). The application puts no limits on your creativity and is ready with various knot concepts to help you create a variety of patterns.

Figure 1: With a little practice, you can design complex, braided knot patterns with Knotter.

Installation

Knotter is downloadable as version 0.9.6b. Despite its beta status, the software proved to be fully functioning and stable in my test. Installation packages in DEB format for distributions such as Ubuntu and Linux Mint are available from SourceForge. Double-clicking on the package installs it.

If a suitable package doesn't exist for your particular distribution, you can compile it from the sources. Download them and unpack the tarball. Open a console in the newly created directory and enter ./configure.sh && make . Then, install the software with root privileges using make install .

First Steps

After startup, you can use Edit | Preferences to configure the program settings. On some systems, Knotter's interface might seem a bit dated. You can change this by clicking the Interface button at the bottom and changing the Widget Style selection to, for example, Clearlooks . Although localization is possible in Language , some languages are not available, so the program interface is mainly in English.

In my test on Ubuntu 14.04, the tooltips weren't working. However, clicking Toolbars | Toolbar Button Style | Text Beside Icon made things understandable.

You can start your first knot pattern with the Edge Chain tool that you can find in the tool palette on the left. To begin, position single points on the working surface clicking with your mouse to create a pattern. After setting a few points, the software automatically creates the first knot pattern and lines (Figure 2). To change the pattern, you can add another point on the line between two others.

Figure 2: All you need are two points on the work surface to create a simple line pattern.

The resulting pattern can then be manipulated using other tools. With Toggle Edges , you can remove the edges between two points without losing associated nodes. With the Undo (Ctrl+Z) function, you can undo work steps.

If you want to connect two previously unconnected nodes, highlight them with the select function and click Connect . Alternatively, reduce multiple points to one with Merge or erase selected points with Erase .