Hey,
I'm trying to get some shirts embroidered, and they told me we could save ourselves a lot of money if we gave them the text to be embroidered in a .DST file format. Is there an open source program that can perform this conversion? There's a program that can do this on windows, but it costs $300.

Thanks in advance.

Looks like your looking for an embroidery digitizer. You can get your text, logo or any graphic digitized at Embroidery Designs Shop I was referred to them through a friend when I needed our bowling logo digitized for some t-shirts it cost us only $10

I realize I'm bumping an old question, but when they come up in my Google searches I like to answer them for the next guy.

This isn't a complete solution, but it is an open source project related to DST files. Looks like it's currently only built on Win32.
Embroidermodder
I'm trying to find Linux embroidery solutions myself. The search goes on.

I'm still looking for a program that will enable me to create .DST files you idea is fine for a one off but I want to use my original artwork to create lots of designs to sell, I can pay zazzle to digitize them for me but no guarrantee they will earn their money back on sales.

This is the only think I could find about embroidery:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/hvembroider/files/

It's ancient, no documentation, no description. Not sure if it will help. You can always run those Window$ programs through wine.

http://embroidermodder.sourceforge.net/ maybe?

That whole knitting stitching world is real small.

Thanks, I'll see if I can get that working in WINE, It looks as though it outputs to the file format I need.

go to embird.com/sw/embird/newdown.htm
for a free 30 day 100 use download of the software
it recognizes almost all graphic formats and convert them to .dst format

Hey all, saw this post and figured I would jump in...i'm searching all over for programs that can convert files and found a good few of them. My issue is the logo I am working with is in PDF format. I can't seem to convert it to ANYTHING, let alone the DST I need. I was hoping to make it into a Jpeg, then use one of the programs to simply make it into .DST but nothing recognizes the PDF, they just don't even show up as an option. Anyone have solutions/ideas to help me out here? It would be very much appreciated. Many thanks ahead of time for anyone who can help!

Make sure to check the man pages of each program to see options like DPI, etc. so that you get the best output.

Heh, loving the epic necropost XD

Is it possible to take a screenshot then save it in the desired format.. IE. Jpeg
Just a thought

The current state of embroidery support in linux is poor (although progress is tangible and is being made) and yet I know that people are still looking for the same things.

Here then is one of the simplest things for embroidery enthusiasts that I have used for a number of years, it will
work with the gnome desktop and I have tried it on Ubuntu, but it will likely work with other desktops that use gnome. The underlying command line utilities will of course work
on any linux system.

It aims to provide content-based icons for PES and JEF embroidery files (Sorry no DST at the moment) and a double-click larger image that also shows the thread list and the size of the design.

Its not a complex thing but you do need to compile it but this should be simple on most linux systems.

You can get it at http://jetmark.co.uk/pjutil_src.tar Note that this is a source file so that if you are concerned about viruses you can unpack it and take a look at it first.
Look in the readme.txt for further instructions.

Mark Winder.

This program can handle DST
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embroidermodder
A Linux version is available as source.