When you first open the FCB4.2 windows utility you will see this screen

 

 

There is a small toolbar , a green 'Tiles Pallet' down the left hand side,  a grey Text Field panel at the bottom of the form which includes a 'Find' button, and the rest is a white squared grid  drawing pad.

 

 

The Toolbar

 

File  Tools  Help

 

File opens a menu with four options New - Open - Save - Save as..

 

New -- clears the drawing area and the text area for a new diagram and cypher.

Open -- opens the File open dialogue box and allows the user to select a cypher file to be displayed or edited in the utility.

Save as..  opens the File Save as dialogue and allows the user to save the present cypher and associated information to a .cyp file.

Save  -- Saves changes to the current opened file.

 

Tools  opens the tools menu with five options      Swap Hand - Nudge Up - Down - Left - Right

 

Swap Hand -- Effectively swaps the 'handedness of the knot by exchanging an over crossing for an under crossing and v.v.

Nudge Up -- moves the whole diagram one cell up and recomputes the cypher accordingly.

Nudge Down -- Moves the whole diagram one cell down etc.

Nudge Left -- Moves the whole diagram one cell left etc.

Nudge Right -- Moves the whole diagram one cell right etc.

Note:  As you nudge the diagram off the screen you are effectively deleting the rows or columns as they pass out of the drawing area.

 

 

The Tiles Pallet

 

The Tiles pallet contains 18 predefined knot element tiles.

 

The first four are cord end symbols, this is generally taken to be the end which is used to tie the knot with.

The next two are horizontal and vertical connectors.

The next two are horizontal and vertical crossing symbols, the continuous line represents the cord on top and the broken line the cord which passes below or behind the other.

Next are four corner symbols.

The next four symbols denote 'the rest of the cord', sometimes called the Standing Part.  These symbols have two purposes.  When they are used pointing away from the knot they signify the Standing Part, but where they are used pointing into the knot, they signify a part of a loop.

Finally, there are two dotted connectors.  These are used to signify that the cord has been passed behind some solid object i.e. when a knot has been made around some object.  When you use one of these tiles, the utility will automatically draw a Spar representation for you.

Beneath the dotted connectors are two Spar controls which may be used to move a Spar over the drawing area or even take it right off the drawing pad.

 

 

The Drawing pad

 

The pad is an addressed grid of drawing cells.  The top left is cell aa, the next cell in the top row is ba etc.

cells may have tile images 'painted' into them and in doing so the complete three letter cypher for that cell is created and added to the cord cypher line at the bottom of the screen..

Cells in the drawing pad may be copied by right clicking and then used to draw with.  This includes right clicking an empty cell which can be used to erase a misplaced tile.

 

 

Information boxes   

 

Four text boxes    Knot Name - References and AKA - Overs Index - Binary Signature

 

Knot Name --   Used to enter the common knot name.

References and AKA  --   Used to record any other information about the knot such as ABoK ref etc.

Note  --  Content in any of these two boxes is optional

Overs Index --    Used to display the automatically calculated Overs Index of the knot

Binary Signature --  Displays the automatically calculated signature for the knot being drawn.

 

To the right of the Binary Signature display is the 'Find' button which will attempt to lookup the Binary Signature in The Knot Library.

 

 

Cord Cypher lines

 

There are three Cords available and each cord has its own cypher text line.

As a knot is drawn in the drawing pad, its cypher is calculated and added to the cords cypher line.

To select a different cord, left click on the cord cypher line.  New additions to the drawing pad will then be added to then new cord selection and the cord drawing will be coloured to reflect the new cord.

 

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