[npunt]

Obsidian's philosophy is file over app [1] and releasing a spec for their Canvas feature is fulfilling that promise. It's a strictly positive 'today is better than yesterday' thing for them to have done so.

You shouldn't need to ask permission or consult anyone to do this. That's a silly bar, 'egregious' even. When markdown was created, Gruber wasn't asking all his friends making text editors whether they'd support it. He just released it, and others chose to adopt it on its merits.

I don't meant this to sound harsh, but just to call it as I see it - your comment is basically creating a 'damned if you do, damned if you don't' scenario and an example of why people building things shouldn't worry much about comments in forums.

[1]: https://stephango.com/file-over-app

[gcr]

I’m glad Obsidian is publishing this, even though the spec clearly isn’t ready yet.

If I had the final say for how this format were to be publicized, I would probably just include the JSON schema “as-is” in the Obsidian developer docs. Then, it’s just as usable by third parties without making promises about interoperability.

But Obsidian is thinking ahead here. They’ve intentionally given us a duck to poke at[1], knowing we’d offer feedback and critique. If the goal is to get people to imagine a better implementation, preying on HN’s “I could implement this so much better” sense is one hecking smart way to get the community to pitch in.

1: https://bwiggs.com/notebook/queens-duck/

[rahoulb]

> Then, it’s just as usable by third parties without making promises about interoperability.

I'd say this is the point.

If it's "published as part of Obsidian" it implies Obsidian can break it at any time and the interop anyone else has built will need updating. But "published as a standalone spec" means Obsidian is saying "we won't change this without warning" (at the very least).

[npunt]

Yeah, whether or not it's intentional, the approach taken is one that will generate a lot of feedback.

I haven't seen anyone mention it in this thread, but my immediate reaction to seeing JSON Canvas was that it looks like a spiritual sibling to Markdown, a famously (and intentionally) informal spec.

There's a real wisdom to this informal spec approach, and it's worked incredibly well for Markdown despite grumblings about its lack of standardization.

I imagine this is the Obsidian team's intention with JSON Canvas. Obsidian has really benefitted from the informality of Markdown, which meant they were free to extend it in ways that made sense to the product (with things like cross-page ^ references, yaml frontmatter, etc), without triggering the Spec Police. The same perhaps applies here to Canvas products.

[keybored]

However, you should ask Gruber if he is willing to bless your your name if you include a hint towards “markdown” in it (referencing Commonmark), or else there’ll be a big kerfuffle. (funny example to use)