What is the WIF format?
The Weaving Information File (.wif) is an open file format for storing and exchanging weaving drafts. It was created in the early 1990s by a committee of weaving software developers who recognized the need for a common format that would allow weavers to share their work across different applications.
A .wif file describes everything needed to reproduce a weaving draft — threading, tieup, treadling, colors, and weave structure —in a plain text, human-readable format that any compliant application can read and write.
History
The WIF format has been in continuous use for over 30 years. It was designed by consensus among the developers of the major weaving software applications of the time, with the goal of ensuring that weavers would never be locked into a single application.
Today the format is supported by all major weaving software on macOS, Windows, and iOS, and is used by handweaving.net to distribute a library of over thousand of weaving drafts. Computerized loom manufacturers also support WIF as the standard format for driving their looms directly from weaving software.
The WIF specification
For a plain-language walkthrough of the format — what each section means at the loom and exactly how it is encoded, written for weavers and developers alike — see the WIF format guide, maintained on GitHub:
Read the WIF format guideThe full WIF format specification documents the structure of .wif files, all supported sections and fields, and the rules for compliant implementations.
Download the WIF specificationThe wif File Extension
The extension .wif is used to type a file that uses the WIF format.
On Windows, file associations are registry entries. There are no restrictions so extensions can easily be shared. Developers can write file with the specified contents and save it.
Browser Apps can also post a file in the wif format for download and not worry about who can read it. Users can save the files to their computer and open in the weaving app of their choice.
Apps for looms that have their own processor also doesn't have any issues as their app will always be the only one on that processor.
Apple operating systems, macOS and IOS have a different philosophy. Apple operating system want to restrict file types to each application for security reasons. This goal called "sandboxing" makes it difficult for macOS and IOS apps to share files.
On macOS or IOS, the user sees the file extension that seems to look just like Windows, but behind the scenes, it is more complex using a Uniform Type Identifier, UTI, that marks each file to specific application. Extensions are not meant to be shared.
Following Apple's rules for defining a file extension, UTI, can problematic when a group wants to share the file type. This is what is happening to the wif extension on Mac or IOS. When multiple apps exist on a single device, only one of those apps can own the file type. The others can be easily locked out of opening files. This is especially difficult when the type is universal and there is no specific owner of the format.
To continue the goal of wif to preserve weaving drafts for all, we need to create organizational UTI for macOS and IOS so that all apps that use it can share files as the .wif format was intended.
The following link presents the requirements and additional code needed to share on macOS or IOS. By adding this code, weaving applications, websites, loom drivers, can continue to share and preserve weaving drafts as was intended with the wif format that was created in 1990's.
The Future of WIF
It is truly amazing that there is a way to maintain weaving drafts as different applications come and go and we want to continue that ability in the future. Most developers and users recognize a need for an updated version of wif, but as humans we have often different opinions. The following link Future Ideas For Wif presents thoughts on how this can be done.
Contact
The purpose of this site is to make it easier to locate and manage the wif format.
For questions about this site, contact canyonart@gmail.com.