Tondo Get Tondo

Will Tondo open my chart?

Short answer: a PDF from a designer will almost certainly open, files from most chart programs open directly, and for the handful Tondo cannot read it says so by name instead of guessing. The free tier exists so you can settle this on your own charts before paying anything.

PDF charts, the main road

This is where most bought charts live. Tondo finds the grid, reads the symbols, and reads the thread key with its floss codes. A multi-page chart becomes one continuous canvas, so the page break stops being the place where you lose your count.

Charts are made in different ways, so there is more than one way in. A chart drawn as text and lines is read straight off the page. A chart that is really a picture, including a scan or a photo of a printed chart, goes through image recognition instead: the grid is found, every square is matched against the symbols, and the legend is read by OCR. That path always lands in a review screen first. It never accepts itself quietly, because a scan can be misread and you should see what Tondo thinks it read before you spend six weeks on it.

Two cases are exact rather than approximate. A FlossCross print-PDF states its own size, floss list and per-colour counts inside the file, so Tondo checks its reading against those numbers before accepting. Any scanned chart whose legend prints per-thread stitch counts gets the same treatment: the counts have to match, or nothing is accepted automatically.

Files from chart software

These open directly, with the colours and thread codes the file carries:

  • OXS, the exchange format several programs read and write
  • PCStitch, versions 5 through 8. Newer saves are attempted and fail honestly if the file turns out to be built differently
  • Pattern Maker
  • KXStitch
  • Crosti
  • Stitch Art Easy!
  • FlossCross, both its own file and its SVG export
  • mySewnet, from Husqvarna Viking and Pfaff
  • StitchCraft
  • Cross Stitch Pro motifs
  • Pattern Keeper charts, which are PDFs on the inside

Backstitch, french knots and fractional stitches come through from several of these formats and are tracked apart from the crosses. Where a file holds something Tondo cannot place, the import report says so rather than dropping it quietly. If a designer sent you a zip, Tondo looks inside and takes the chart out.

The honest no’s

Some files are recognised precisely and then refused, by name, with the reason. That is deliberate. When you are about to spend months on a chart, a subtly wrong one is worse than none.

  • Cstitch projects are not charts. The file is a recipe the program replays: your picture, the settings, and the edits you made. Reading it would mean rebuilding Cstitch’s own maths exactly, and any drift would hand you a chart that looks right and is not.
  • Cross Stitch Saga, KG-Chart, Coricamo and Puntotek files are recognised, but their chart data is packed in a way their makers do not publish.
  • Easy Cross De Luxe and MarkUp R-XP files are encrypted. Prising them open is not something we will do.
  • WinStitch and MacStitch project files are, by their own maker’s account, not meant to be read anywhere else.
  • A Pattern Keeper progress export carries your progress but no chart: no grid, no palette, no symbols. On its own there is nothing to draw.

If yours is on that list, the way in is the chart’s PDF, which nearly every designer ships, or an OXS export from the program you already have.

Photos are a different door

Turning your own photo into a chart is not import, it is generation, and it happens entirely on your device with real DMC colours. Nothing is uploaded and there is no charge per pattern. The same is true of the blank grid you can draw on yourself: nothing to open, nothing to parse, just a chart you make. The features page covers both.

If your chart does not open

Then tell us, and send the file: support@oomny.eu. A chart that will not open is a bug on our side, not a mistake on yours, and it is the kind we most want to hear about. Try yours on the free tier first; that is what it is there for.