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Canvas: Notes for teams of nerds

usecanvas.com

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Re: Canvas: Notes for teams of nerds

#51

Post by jclem »

seagreen wrote: post #45

What's your data format? Good programmers will care as much about that as how your UI works. I see you've got a formatting guide: https://usecanvas.com/about/formatting-guide/0DZTK4lz2cWsqOn... Do you have a more formal specification for your format? More importantly, how do you handle history? If I spend a year putting notes into Canvas and then have to switch for some reason (which might happen no matter how awesom…

If you're asking what we're storing in the database, that data is a plain string with some special delimiters in it denoting line types and metadata about the content.

At the application level, we're typically working with a version of that data that's structured a little bit more like this: https://usecanvas.com/about/canvas/55h8GVkBfi5Lnr2Becv5tB.js...

Currently, exporting your canvas will give you the format above, or `.markdown`, or `.html`. To answer your second question, we use operational transformation for the collaborative part of the platform, so we do have some history of operations on a canvas, but haven't quite decided for how long we'll be retaining that history and how we can best make it available to users.

Re: Canvas: Notes for teams of nerds

#53

Post by kuschku »

jclem wrote: post #49
kuschku wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You built your project on an API that just became a working draft? What do you do when it inevitably changes?

Like the "read more" link about FF support says, we plan on supporting it and IE10+ in the future. This doesn't mean "we are waiting for them to fully support this working draft", but rather that we haven't implemented polyfills for the (relatively small) number of APIs missing, yet. When/if the spec changes significantly, these polyfills should carry us until we can change the non-polyfilled version of the code.

If that’s the case, then why develop based on a browser that isn’t even the most used browser anyway?

Especially devs have a quite equal share between Firefox and Chrome (due to the privacy implications of Chrome), so using private extensions that are non-standard, and, according to what you say, irrelevant for your product has to be quite an irrational move.

Re: Canvas: Notes for teams of nerds

#54

Post by amelius »

khedoros wrote: post #46
amelius wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Canvas is a generic term for something you draw or write on. Even in the context of computing. See for example the HTML canvas.

Those statements are all true, but they aren't an argument against the company being able to own a trademark on "Canvas". Canvas isn't "a term that is generic for the goods and/or services identified in the application". "Software as a Service" would be, and so would "Collaboration Software". A company called "Chainsaw" could be a lumberjack company. One called "Chisels" could provide stone masonry services. This, de…

The service they provide is essentially a canvas. They go through great lengths to provide to the user the abstraction of a canvas. So this would be analogous to a chainsaw company selling a product named "Chainsaw".

Re: Canvas: Notes for teams of nerds

#55

Post by jenseng »

spdustin wrote: post #18

Instructure, the company behind Canvas LMS, is a pretty big company, and their software is used by many, many companies/educational institutions. It could be argued that Canvas (the notes app here) is confusingly similar to Canvas LMS wiki pages. I hate being the guy to suggest a name change, but it may be something to consider before you get a lot of traction. I definitely understand the instinctive "fuck no" respon…

Does the trademark office just rubber stamp anything they get and let the lawyers fight it out? IANAL, but these look pretty similar:

85632326 (Instructure):

IC 042. US 100 101. G & S: Application service provider (ASP) featuring software to enable uploading, posting, showing, displaying, tagging, blogging, sharing or otherwise providing electronic media or information over the Internet or other communications network

86642511 (Canvas Labs):

IC 042. US 100 101. G & S: software as a service (SaaS) services featuring software used to allow collaboration between users for sharing information; software as a service (SaaS) services featuring software to create, structure, edit, access, integrate, manage, interpret and synchronize documents, content and data between users

Re: Canvas: Notes for teams of nerds

#56

Post by jclem »

verst wrote: post #50
vulpino wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been really happy with Dropbox Paper (invite only right now, http://paper.dropbox.com , an article overviewing it: http://www.techinsider.io/hands-on-with-dropbox-paper-2015-1... ). Canvas looks strikingly similar to this (almost exactly the same aesthetically), and I'm curious what the "killer feature(s)" are which give it an advantage over Paper, which is developed by a much larger company (Dropbox).

Came here to say the same thing. Extremely similar to Dropbox Paper. I haven't been that happy with Dropbox Paper though. It doesn't handle basic things like bullets in indented blocks, or line/paragraph breaks in numbered lists. Hackpad (Dropbox acquisition) didn't look as nice, but had more functionality. Now Paper is replacing Hackpad. I'll be giving Canvas a try.

Let me know how it goes! jonathan [at] usecanvas [dot] com

Re: Canvas: Notes for teams of nerds

#57

Post by jclem »

kuschku wrote: post #53
jclem wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Like the "read more" link about FF support says, we plan on supporting it and IE10+ in the future. This doesn't mean "we are waiting for them to fully support this working draft", but rather that we haven't implemented polyfills for the (relatively small) number of APIs missing, yet. When/if the spec changes significantly, these polyfills should carry us until we can change the non-polyfilled version of the code.

If that’s the case, then why develop based on a browser that isn’t even the most used browser anyway? Especially devs have a quite equal share between Firefox and Chrome (due to the privacy implications of Chrome), so using private extensions that are non-standard, and, according to what you say, irrelevant for your product has to be quite an irrational move.

The overwhelming majority of the traffic we've seen so far has been Chrome and Safari, even from HN.

That being said, that wasn't necessarily the driving factor in the "use the fancy selection APIs" decision. There were many factors, but for one thing, choosing to use those APIs, while limiting our browser support (for a limited amount of time) helped us get to where we are now at a quicker pace than if we'd opted for much broader browser support from day 1.

One of the challenges here for Firefox is that there's not an API to determine when a user's selection changes. We need this in order for inline markdown to collapse/expand as the cursor comes within proximity of it. It's definitely possible to poly-fill this, we just haven't done it, yet :\ We could disable this for Firefox, but I'd rather ship Firefox support with the rad stuff that the other major browsers already get.

Re: Canvas: Notes for teams of nerds

#58

Post by moron4hire »

jclem wrote: post #57
kuschku wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If that’s the case, then why develop based on a browser that isn’t even the most used browser anyway? Especially devs have a quite equal share between Firefox and Chrome (due to the privacy implications of Chrome), so using private extensions that are non-standard, and, according to what you say, irrelevant for your product has to be quite an irrational move.

The overwhelming majority of the traffic we've seen so far has been Chrome and Safari, even from HN. That being said, that wasn't necessarily the driving factor in the "use the fancy selection APIs" decision. There were many factors, but for one thing, choosing to use those APIs, while limiting our browser support (for a limited amount of time) helped us get to where we are now at a quicker pace than if we'd opted fo…

It is trivially easy to poll it in an animation loop.

Re: Canvas: Notes for teams of nerds

#59

Post by skeoh »

fluxquanta wrote: post #16
wnevets wrote: post #8

This is going to sound silly but the crooked box at the bottom of the home page is so off putting.

It was hard for me to get past "we need a workbench for our [lightbulb]", but that crooked box sealed the deal.

Is that what it was? I am on a non-emoji environment so all I saw was "for our []".

Re: Canvas: Notes for teams of nerds

#60

Post by khedoros »

amelius wrote: post #54
khedoros wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those statements are all true, but they aren't an argument against the company being able to own a trademark on "Canvas". Canvas isn't "a term that is generic for the goods and/or services identified in the application". "Software as a Service" would be, and so would "Collaboration Software". A company called "Chainsaw" could be a lumberjack company. One called "Chisels" could provide stone masonry services. This, de…

The service they provide is essentially a canvas. They go through great lengths to provide to the user the abstraction of a canvas. So this would be analogous to a chainsaw company selling a product named "Chainsaw".

Crucially, the USPTO disagrees with you (although, who knows? That could change in the future). Is the company providing a canvas, or a collaboration tool that uses an abstraction of a canvas to operate? I think that you're conflating what a thing is with how that thing is constructed. It is a collaboration tool. It uses a canvas. "Canvas" isn't a generic word within the realm of SaaS collaboration tools, so a trademark on that name, in that context, should be valid.

In your example, a chainsaw company could produce a product called Chainsaw, but it couldn't (shouldn't be able to, at least) gain a trademark for that name.

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