This is something I'd love to see built into the OS. I don't want multiple desktops as much as I want the ability to zoom around a giant desktop.
Haha, no thanks. Imagine microsoft doing this. The windows would BSOD every 5 minutes.
Show HN: Obsidian Canvas – An infinite space for your ideas
271–280 of 394 posts
Re: Show HN: Obsidian Canvas – An infinite space for your ideas
#272This is cool, but the killer feature I'm looking for is a UI that matches the functionality of grit https://github.com/climech/grit. Grit itself isn't particularly functional for every-day use, but its write-up in the readme is excellent and the DAG hasn't been realized by any existing task tracking software (as far as I'm aware).
Re: Show HN: Obsidian Canvas – An infinite space for your ideas
#273This looks like Obsidian's first move away from using some dialect of markdown? The .canvas files appear to be human readable json, but certainly not as readable as markdown. I'm excited to try this out, but I hope this isn't a trend towards using proprietary formats.
We considered many options to use Markdown but came to the conclusion that Canvas is not something that can fit into a readable Markdown file. Either the Markdown file would so messy that it becomes pointless (i.e. you would never open it in Typora to edit), or it would severely limit the power of Canvas. After much internal debate we chose the JSON format. We stay committed to keep it as open and easy to work with a…
Opportunity cost. I wrote on your forums about the decioson of using plain markdown. Consider other formats to stop bloating(yaml and dataview variables) markdown files. Now you have bloated md files and another format. Now i am saying you will add sqlite after one or two years. Waiting for extra file formats making existing files ugly.
Also obsidian needs multi user vaults. Start to think what extra file format needed for this.
Re: Show HN: Obsidian Canvas – An infinite space for your ideas
#274Obsidian Canvas uses a new JSON-based file format that we have open-sourced under MIT license. You can see the spec here: https://github.com/obsidianmd/obsidian-api/blob/master/canva... Just like all other files in Obsidian, canvas files are your own and local to your device. You're still linking to your own Markdown files which are just as future-proof as ever. We decided to create the .canvas format because there w…
What does it mean to open-source or MIT-license a "file format"?
The MIT license is a license about copyrighted software, allowing people to use/modify/publish that software. But a file format isn't a piece of software.
Are you open-sourcing the specification document for the file format? (people are still free to write software that reads+writes the file format even if the specification document isn't open-sourced).
Are you open-sourcing your particular library for reading the file format? (I'm confused here, because you stressed that the file format was so simple, so I'd have expected it easy and maybe even desirable for many people to come up with libraries for reading+writing the file foramt?)
Re: Show HN: Obsidian Canvas – An infinite space for your ideas
#275As evidenced by a link to AlternativeTo on their own site, this space has a lot (145+) of competition [0]. At some level, I worry about using things much more complex than a text file, because of portability and longevity. It's enough of a pain transitioning between Google and Microsoft (and back) every few years based on various jobs. I have files from the late 1980's that I can still read, but only with Libre Offic…
That's kinda the biggest selling point of Obsidian...? It's all just markdown files. Markdown is a standard format, so you can open it in many other apps as well.
Re: Show HN: Obsidian Canvas – An infinite space for your ideas
#276Mark my words Obsidian will be the next unicorn.
Re: Show HN: Obsidian Canvas – An infinite space for your ideas
#277Earlier quoted context omitted.
You are confusing two different ideas here. The Canvas format is MIT licensed in the same way that Markdown uses a BSD-type license. That means we are giving explicit permission for anyone to use the format and build apps, scripts, plugins on top of it. Photoshop/PSD on the other hand is a closed proprietary format: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proprietary_file_format
This is a pretty grating response, given how pointed it is. It's not made any better by the first sentence; it seems that you are the one confusing two different (types of) things: > The Canvas format is MIT licensed in the same way that Markdown uses a BSD-type license. In no sense are these two things comparable. "Markdown uses a BSD-type license" is a true statement because "Markdown", in the context where it make…
I appreciate the distinction you're making. I could have been more accurate in my description. Markdown states in its own documentation that the name refers to two things, and "Canvas" to date fits mostly in (1)
> Thus, “Markdown” is two things: (1) a plain text formatting syntax; and (2) a software tool, written in Perl, that converts the plain text formatting to HTML.
What we have done so far is shared an open spec for the .canvas file format, with a type definition that helps developers understand how to create properly formed Canvas files. We also are giving permission to people/companies to use this format with the freedoms that come with the MIT license. In addition we're also putting forward the intention that there should be a free and open format for this type of canvas data, with some similar properties to Markdown. Perhaps in the future there will be more open source tooling fitting into definition (2).
The goal here is simply to help people feel more comfortable that the canvas files they create are their own, and can eventually accrue longevity as more tools get built around the format. I hope this will lead to a rich ecosystem outside of Obsidian. We're committing to keeping it an open format, and hope to collaborate with other people who might want to adopt it.
The same can't be said about the PSD format, so I do think there is a difference in the level of openness that we're aiming for.
Re: Show HN: Obsidian Canvas – An infinite space for your ideas
#278Earlier quoted context omitted.
Obsidian Sync is by no means cheap, but I've never used a better syncing service. I'm on my second year and can't think of a single issue I've had across laptops, desktops, an Android phone, and a Chromebook.
I can think of a number of other notes syncing that's better -- probably even Evernote's. As a happily paying Obsidian Sync customer, I'll drop some reality, so new people aren't caught off-guard. - Obsidian Sync is pretty slow. - Obsidian Sync doesn't happen in the background, at present. That means, if you just made a bunch of updates in Obsidian, or you haven't opened the Obsidian mobile app in a while, you're in…
Totally agreed. Obsidian sync is pretty disappointing, honestly. I still use it, but I would call it just barely good enough.
Re: Show HN: Obsidian Canvas – An infinite space for your ideas
#279Obsidian Canvas uses a new JSON-based file format that we have open-sourced under MIT license. You can see the spec here: https://github.com/obsidianmd/obsidian-api/blob/master/canva... Just like all other files in Obsidian, canvas files are your own and local to your device. You're still linking to your own Markdown files which are just as future-proof as ever. We decided to create the .canvas format because there w…
The local first approach is the primary reason I use Obsidian. I trust that I can _depend_ on Obsidian because of this. On the other hand, this has also caused some headaches around using it on mobile.. but so far this has been a worthwhile tradeoff. Thanks for all the hard work!
So simple, they combine the best of all eras: local first, open, published formats and pluggable/byo multi-device sync/backup – Cloud if you wish, but not required. It gives me hope for the future, I wish more software these days followed this model.
Caveat: not an obsidian user (although I am a big step closer after this)
Re: Show HN: Obsidian Canvas – An infinite space for your ideas
#280Earlier quoted context omitted.
I can think of a number of other notes syncing that's better -- probably even Evernote's. As a happily paying Obsidian Sync customer, I'll drop some reality, so new people aren't caught off-guard. - Obsidian Sync is pretty slow. - Obsidian Sync doesn't happen in the background, at present. That means, if you just made a bunch of updates in Obsidian, or you haven't opened the Obsidian mobile app in a while, you're in…
What's faster than Obs sync? Genuinely curious since I thought I tried most of the options out there apart from syncthing.
I use Microsoft Word’s multi-editing feature at work. The sync is essentially real-time (setting aside other opinions in Microsoft Office). You can see every change that your co-editors make as they make it. You can work on one file on two different devices at the same time. That is the kind of sync that I’d like.
More realistically, I used to use a custom sync setup with a WebDAV server I set up and Goodsync software. You can set it to sync in file change, and it was fast, with changes replicating in a few seconds.
As it is, the Obsidian sync takes a few minutes. And if you edit the file on another device before sync goes through, you’ll lose the changes from one device or the other.