Previously posted in 2022 as Obsidian Canvas before being open sourced in 2024 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34066824
JSON Canvas Spec (2024)
11–20 of 43 posts
Re: JSON Canvas Spec (2024)
#12Are pixels really the best way to encode position at this point?
I’m playing with 3d positions derived from higher dimensions, right now.
Re: JSON Canvas Spec (2024)
#13I'm not sure about this: An "infinite" canvas without some notion of recursion such as viewports feels incomplete.
A file node can be a .canvas, so a .canvas can have nested canvases.
Obsidian's implementation of JSON Canvas supports this.
Re: JSON Canvas Spec (2024)
#14It would be useful to have examples of data and the representation this would result in. Although you can go to https://jsoncanvas.org/ itself and see an example rendering, you cannot see the exact data that created it - I think, although you can sort of guess since the element names are stuff like node. I sort of doubt this is the best data structure for representing this kind of thing. Maybe I'm wrong though but I…
You can see the data it created. Just click "Toggle output" in the bottom right corner.
Oh, thanks. Those buttons seem designed to be as inconspicuous as possible.
This just looks like a pretty normal homepage. It was not obvious to me at all that the homepage was an actual dynamically rendered canvas, as opposed to just canvas-"themed".
Re: JSON Canvas Spec (2024)
#15I've used canvas quite a bit since it was release in Obsidian. It's good, not great, but the simplicity of the file type opens up a lot of opportunities to build on top of it.
It took me a while to start using canvases. But now I think they should be a much more common UI pattern. They really shine on large (40"+ non-retina 4k) screens. The simplicity at launch made me feel more confident in using them at all. I don't use most of the other obsidian features/plugins.
Re: JSON Canvas Spec (2024)
#16I'm not sure why it popped up today, but it's nice to see it on HN again! A brief timeline with some links to past discussions:
- 2022: The .canvas open format was created for Obsidian Canvas [0].
- 2024: Official 1.0 spec of JSON Canvas [1].
- 2024-2025: A number of apps/libraries built up around conversion, storage, and import/export [2].
- 2026: Obsidian Skills [3] includes support for .canvas (along with .md and .base) to make it easy for LLMs to read/write JSON Canvas, and opens interesting visualization/interaction patterns with agents.
[0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34066824
[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39670922
Re: JSON Canvas Spec (2024)
#17I've used canvas quite a bit since it was release in Obsidian. It's good, not great, but the simplicity of the file type opens up a lot of opportunities to build on top of it.
What would make it great in your eyes?
Re: JSON Canvas Spec (2024)
#18I'm not sure why it popped up today, but it's nice to see it on HN again! A brief timeline with some links to past discussions: - 2022: The .canvas open format was created for Obsidian Canvas [0]. - 2024: Official 1.0 spec of JSON Canvas [1]. - 2024-2025: A number of apps/libraries built up around conversion, storage, and import/export [2]. - 2026: Obsidian Skills [3] includes support for .canvas (along with .md and…
Hey thanks for [3] obsidian-skills, I've been using Obsidian for years and Claude for months and it's time for them to meet! Stoked to check it out. :)
Re: JSON Canvas Spec (2024)
#19I feel like this page does a good job of telling me nothing. It's a representation of a graph? Where each node can be a text string or a file or a URL or a container of other nodes? And somehow these links and files and containers have a color? What is the purpose of this? Why would I want my file to be blue?
Re: JSON Canvas Spec (2024)
#20Earlier quoted context omitted.
You can see the data it created. Just click "Toggle output" in the bottom right corner.
ah ok, sorry about that. I didn't really look at that part of the UI much, noticed it had some zoom stuff, noticed I couldn't zoom normally and scroll to where I wanted to read, was somewhat miffed.
Curious to know what “zoom normally” means for you. For me, it’s ctrl+mouse wheel or maybe two finger pinch/pull on trackpad. I am thoroughly confused as to why GitHub’s mermaid integration doesn’t seem to support any zoom outside of the overlay controls which…ick