Acknowledgments
===============

🙏 Credits and Recognition
---------------------------

Primary Contributors
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

**Megan Hofmann** - Lead Developer and Maintainer
  Primary architect and developer of the knitout-interpreter library.
  Responsible for design, implementation, and ongoing maintenance.

Research Institutions
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

**Northeastern University ACT Lab**
  The Augmented Creativity and Textiles (ACT) Lab at Northeastern University
  provides the primary research context and support for this work.

  - Laboratory website: `ACT Lab <https://act.khoury.northeastern.edu/>`_
  - Focus areas: Human-computer interaction, computational textiles, digital fabrication

**Carnegie Mellon University Textiles Lab**
  The original creators of the knitout specification that this library implements.

  - **Jim McCann** and collaborators for establishing the knitout standard
  - Their foundational work enabled machine-readable knitting instructions
  - Papers and tools that defined the field of computational knitting

Funding Support
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

This work has been supported by the National Science Foundation through the following grants:

**NSF Grant 2341880**
  **Title**: "HCC:SMALL:Tools for Programming and Designing Interactive Machine-Knitted Smart Textiles"

  - **Program**: Human-Centered Computing (HCC)
  - **Award Type**: Small Grant
  - **Focus**: Development of programming tools for smart textile creation
  - **Impact**: Enables the creation of interactive and responsive knitted materials

**NSF Grant 2327137**
  **Title**: "Collaborative Research: HCC: Small: End-User Guided Search and Optimization for Accessible Product Customization and Design"

  - **Program**: Human-Centered Computing (HCC)
  - **Award Type**: Small Collaborative Grant
  - **Focus**: Making design tools accessible to end users
  - **Impact**: Democratizes access to computational design capabilities

Academic Foundations
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

**Foundational Publications**

The work builds upon several key academic contributions:

- **"A Compiler for 3D Machine Knitting"** - McCann et al.
  Established the theoretical foundation for automatic knitting compilation

- **"Automatic Machine Knitting of 3D Meshes"** - Narayanan et al.
  Demonstrated the feasibility of complex 3D knitting through computation

- **"Visual Knitting Machine Programming"** - McCann et al.
  Introduced visual programming concepts for knitting machines

**Research Community**

The broader computational textiles and digital fabrication research community
has provided inspiration, feedback, and collaboration opportunities that have
shaped this work.

Technical Dependencies
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

**Open Source Libraries**

This project builds upon excellent open source software:

- **parglare** - Parser generator library by Igor Dejanović
- **Python** - The Python Software Foundation and core developers
- **Sphinx** - Documentation generation framework
- **Git and GitHub** - Version control and collaboration platform

**Related Projects**

- **knit-graphs** - Fabric data structure library
- **virtual-knitting-machine** - Machine simulation engine
- **koda-knitout** - Optimization framework

Community Support
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

**Beta Testers and Early Users**

The library has benefited from feedback and testing by:

- Researchers in computational textiles
- Students in digital fabrication courses
- Industry practitioners in automated knitting
- Open source contributors and reviewers

**Code Contributors**

While currently maintained primarily by Megan Hofmann, the project welcomes
and acknowledges contributions from the broader community.

Industry Connections
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

**Machine Manufacturers**

The development has been informed by collaboration and consultation with:

- Knitting machine manufacturers
- Industrial knitting practitioners
- Textile industry professionals

**Standards Organizations**

The project aligns with and contributes to standards development in:

- Digital textile manufacturing
- Machine programming interfaces
- Computational fabrication workflows

License and Legal
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

**MIT License**

This project is released under the MIT License, ensuring broad accessibility
and use while acknowledging the contributions of all involved parties.

**Intellectual Property**

The work respects and builds upon existing intellectual property in the field,
properly attributing foundational contributions while adding novel capabilities.

Future Acknowledgments
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

**Ongoing Collaboration**

The project continues to benefit from:

- Active research collaboration with academic institutions
- Industry partnerships and consultation
- Community feedback and contributions
- Integration with related open source projects

**Call for Contributions**

We welcome and will acknowledge:

- Code contributions and improvements
- Documentation enhancements
- Bug reports and feature requests
- Academic citations and research applications
- Educational use and course integration

Contact and Attribution
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

**How to Cite**

If you use this software in academic work, please cite:

.. code-block:: text

    Hofmann, M. (2024). knitout-interpreter: A Python library for interpreting
    and executing knitout files. Version 0.0.18.
    https://github.com/mhofmann-Khoury/knitout_interpreter

**Contact Information**

- **Primary Maintainer**: Megan Hofmann <m.hofmann@northeastern.edu>
- **Institution**: Northeastern University ACT Lab
- **Project Repository**: https://github.com/mhofmann-Khoury/knitout_interpreter

**Acknowledgment in Publications**

This work should be acknowledged in publications as:

  "This work used the knitout-interpreter library developed by Megan Hofmann
  at Northeastern University's ACT Lab, supported by NSF grants 2341880 and 2327137."

---

**Thank you to everyone who has contributed to making computational knitting
more accessible and powerful through open source software and collaborative research.**
