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Adding options

I have shown what our bib should look like, and added the head measurement to work with. But there's still a number of choices I have to make:

  • How large should the neck opening be?
  • How wide should the bib be?
  • How long should the bib be?

I could make all of these choices for the user and set them in stone, so to speak.

But since the pattern I am designing is code, it is trivial (and IMHO very satisfying) to make a pattern flexible and let the user choose. All I need to do to give control to the user is add options to the part.

Add the neckRatio option​

The first option I will add controls the ratio between the neck opening and the head circumference. Let's call it neckRatio.

For this, I will add the options property to our bib object:

function draftBib({ part }) {
  return part
}

export const bib = {
  name: 'fromscratch.bib',
  draft: draftBib,
  measurements: [ 'head' ],
  options: {
    neckRatio: {
      pct: 80,
      min: 70,
      max: 90,
      menu: 'fit'
    },
  },
}

Can you guess what it means?

  • We've added the options property to our bib object
  • On the options property, we have added neckRatio which holds the configuration for our option
  • It is a pct option -- which means it's a percentage
  • Its default value is 80%
  • Its minimum value is 70%
  • Its maximum value is 90%

There are different types of options, but percentages are by far the most common ones. They are all documented in the part reference docs.

note
What is menu and why should you care?​

The menu property on our option is extra. It will be ignored by FreeSewing's core library and if we leave it out, our design will produce the same result.

Instead, this menu property is there for the benefit of FreeSewing's development environment which will use this to build a menu structure for the various options.

This is covered in more detail in Part 3 of this tutorial.

Add the widthRatio and lengthRatio options​

Let's do something similar for the width and length of our bib:

function draftBib({ part }) => {
  return part
}

export const bib = {
  name: 'fromScratch.bib',
  draft: draftBib,
  measurements: [ 'head' ],
  options: {
    neckRatio: {
      pct: 80,
      min: 70,
      max: 90,
      menu: 'fit'
    },

    widthRatio: {
      pct: 45,
      min: 35,
      max: 55,
      menu: 'style'
    },
    lengthRatio: {
      pct: 75,
      min: 55,
      max: 85,
      menu: 'style'
    },
  },
}

This is pretty much the exact same thing, except that are placing these in the style menu.

Later, I will test-drive our pattern to see how it behaves when we adapt the options between their minimum and maximum values. At that time, I may need to tweak these values.

With that out of the way, I will start drawing the bib.