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Show HN: Obsidian Canvas – An infinite space for your ideas

obsidian.md

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Re: Show HN: Obsidian Canvas – An infinite space for your ideas

#91
post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I kind of wish they would plant a stake in the ground and declare it feature complete and then go into maintenance mode. It's almost inevitable that they are going to keep adding features, give up control to VCs, and then fade away like Evernote. This feature is neat, but it feels like a turning point. I believe it's the first betrayal of the it's-just-a-folder-of-markdown-files principle.

I agree that VC basically killed Evernote. Obsidian is completely user-supported, no investors, we're explicitly avoiding the VC route. As far as features go, we're continuing down the path of a modular architecture. The core will continue to be as streamlined as possible. Canvas is like any other plugin, you can disable it. We think that flexibility is important, because not everyone thinks the same way. You should…

Did the core of Obsidian have to be changed at all to support Canvas? If so, then I don't think it is like any other plugin.

If this were just another pluigin that you could download and use if you want, I really wouldn't care. It's the fact that it's considered part of the core product that gives me bad vibes. It feels like the project, even without VC money, is doing what almost every other successful project does - expand.

Do you think Obsidian will ever be considered "done"?

Re: Show HN: Obsidian Canvas – An infinite space for your ideas

#95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Great! I love the philosophy around open and clear formats. Like I have said before, a second brain should be as open and reliable as possible.

Trello boards export to JSON, would you consider it open? OneNote notebooks are also an open and well-documented specification, as well as local first and backed by a very reliable company, which makes them just as open as Obsidian by those standards. https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/openspecs/office_file_form...

The Canvas JSON is not an export format, it is the file that the app actually reads and edits. Being explicitly MIT licensed also gives permission to other people/companies to build their own tools using that format.

Re: Show HN: Obsidian Canvas – An infinite space for your ideas

#96
post #34

Obsidian 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…

Markdown was never intended for data with a graph structure, so I think it's the right decision to use a different simple format instead of creating yet another bloated non-standard Markdown variant.

Re: Show HN: Obsidian Canvas – An infinite space for your ideas

#99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Great! I love the philosophy around open and clear formats. Like I have said before, a second brain should be as open and reliable as possible.

Trello boards export to JSON, would you consider it open? OneNote notebooks are also an open and well-documented specification, as well as local first and backed by a very reliable company, which makes them just as open as Obsidian by those standards. https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/openspecs/office_file_form...

Exporting is different than "being stored in". Since it does not represent the full state of the data, no.

Re: Show HN: Obsidian Canvas – An infinite space for your ideas

#100
post #93

I've heard about Obsidian for a while but never got around to using it. Does anyone know if I can take notes and highlight on a web page and include that onto canvas? That's what I'm looking for, notes close to the source as possible.

I'm not sure if that is available out of the box, I haven't seen it if it is. But the killer feature of Obsidian is the community plugin ecosystem. I would be surprised if a plugin isn't available soon so make this happen.
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