Patterning

A Clojure library for generating patterns, both at the small scale and the "layout" of smaller units. Units can be recursively nested. It was originally written to work with Quil, the Clojure wrapper around Processing, but has now been broken into several separate projects.

Patterning Core

This repository, Patterning Core, contains code to generate patterns. But is no longer referencing or dependent on Quil / Processing at all. The generated patterns are merely data-structures. This library contains a function to render them as simple SVG. But it's likely you will want to write your own renderer for the pattern in the framework / environment you are working in.

Patterning Core is now in cljc, so it can be compiled to both Clojure and ClojureScript. And it can run in the browser.

A compiled version of this library is now available on Clojars. Include in your Lein project using :

(See below for an example of how to do this.)

How (and Where) to Use It

Patterning works in ClojureScript

The easiest way, today, to just play around with Patterning is to try it in the online tutorial. Previously "Project RoseEngine" was a browser-based Patterning editor. This has now been replaced by the ability to edit and update Patterning patterns on many sites. Including in the tutorial itself.

This is a purely ClojureScript, in-browser environment in which you can write and render patterns, and export them as SVG or PostScript.

Patterning in Cardigan Bay

Cardigan Bay, a wiki / note-taking / digital gardening engine written in Clojure, also has Patterning built in. That means you can add patterns to your wiki in the form of short embedded scripts.

Cardigan Bay is another easy way to play with Patterning without writing your own application. It's distributed as a Java app that will run on any desktop OS. You don't need a Clojure environment installed.

Other Documentation

As of writing, https://github.com/nataliefreed also has some nice documentation of the different functions in Patterning at : https://docs.google.com/document/d/1kKsBw3C4jrPGtr7BRYbmcbid4FgWn0_CzdNy1bQ60b8/edit?pli=1

Patterning Quil

A separate project now shows how to use Patterning Core in a Quil / Processing project. See the example on that page.

Patterning for Processing

Patterning was originally written to be used in all-Clojure projects. But for those who are already more familiar with, or need to work in, Java and the Processing development environment itself, there's now a standard Processing Library wrapper around Patterning.

The source for that library and examples are on Patterning for Processing. They are based on the standard Processing Library template.

Patterning in FX(hash)

Patterning supports creating generative NFTs for the FX(hash) NFT market. The distinctive feature of FX(hash) is that it enables (and requires) works that contain randomness, to use its own deterministic pseudorandom library which seeds the random number generator with an ID based on the NFT token. The practical upshot is that each minted edition of the NFT will look different (due to being based on a different sequence of random numbers), but every time you look at the same minted edition of the work it will look (or evolve) the same way.

This gives each minted edition a unique identity.

To support this usage, all Patterning functions that use random numbers now take an optional argument of a "RandomGenerator". RandomGenerator is a Clojure Protocol defined maths.cljc that declares a number of methods for returning random integers, floats, angles and items from collections.

In the directory NFTmaker/ in this repository, there is an example of a simple system for making Patterning based NFTs. This includes fxhash_random_generator.js, a Javascript implementation of an object that corresponds to the RandomGenerator protocol, but uses the FX(hash) library.

There's more information in the README in that directory.

What Patterning looks like

See more examples in the Patterning Tutorial

Quick Start

git clone https://github.com/interstar/Patterning-Core.git Patterning
cd Patterning
mkdir outs
lein run

You should see that Patterning has produced several example patterns in the outs directory.

Check the src/clj/core.clj for code that made these patterns.

DEPRECATED

Older Patterning repo.

License

Copyright © 2014-2025 Phil Jones

Distributed under the Gnu Lesser General Public License either version 3.0 or (at your option) any later version.