The goal of the Open Canvas Working Group (OCWG) is to establish interoperability between different infinite canvas tools.

The OCWG is an open working group of inifinite canvas tool builders and users who are iterating on a standard to drive interoperability between a wide variety of infinite canvas tools.

Intended Outcomes

FAQ

Q: Why not just push issues and pull requests to Obsidian's JSON Canvas? Why the separate organization, website, and name?

A: JSON Canvas is an excellent starting point, and if it already serves your needs we recommend it! OCWG provides a forum for larger discussions around canvas interoperability and additional resources for the development of those standards. It's a reason to get builders in the same room, working towards the same goal, talking through the challenges and collectively iterating towards solutions. We fully anticipate that our work will drive issues and pull requests against JSON Canvas.

Contributing

All major discussions and artefacts will be public on GitHub. You can also join our Discord for ephemeral discussions. Major updates go out biweekly via email.

Meetings

Next Meeting: #15 - December 17, 12:00 ET

We meet every 2 weeks on Tuesdays. Meeting recordings, transcriptions and other artifacts can be found in the linked discussions.

Past Meetings

Date/Time Topic Recap
Dec 3, 12:00am ET TThe Open Canvas Working Group meeting focused on refining the OCIF specification by organizing spec documentation, defining key concepts like "canvas," finalizing JSON structure and coordinate systems, establishing licensing and namespaces, and addressing extensions, schemas, and file formats, with action items aimed at improving clarity, community involvement, and interoperability. Meeting #13
Nov 19, 12:00am ET The meeting focused on distinguishing groups and sets conceptually, refining extensible JSON modeling strategies, addressing schema conflicts, and strategizing adoption and branding for the Open Canvas format. Meeting #13
Nov 5, 12:00am ET The Open Canvas Working Group meeting focused on discussing the representation and distinction of directed and undirected edges, the integration of ports as visual and logical nodes, attaching metadata to edge types using RDF-like structures, defining schema properties for enhanced modeling, addressing complexities in hyper edges, and planning documentation enhancements with visual JSON examples and tools like PlantUML, while solidifying future action items for implementation and documentation improvements. Meeting #12
Okt 5, 12:00am ET The team explored key design challenges in OCWG, from JSON Schema limitations and group deletion semantics to parent-child relationships and connectors, while outlining actions to improve structure and interoperability across tools. Meeting #11
Sep 17, 12:00am ET Node, Relation, Resource, and Schema Structure, ID Management, Caching Considerations, JSON Linked Data vs JSON schema, Extensibility and Schema Features Meeting #10
Sep 5, 12:00am ET The OCWG meeting focused on legal structures, resource handling, node relations, and namespace management, while aligning the Open Canvas format with GLTF’s standards for interoperability. Meeting #9
July 30, 11:30am ET JSON Schema Development, Asset Handling, Extension System, and Expert Collaboration Meeting #8
July 9, 11:30am ET Codeflow demos and discussions of schema extension, asset handling, and z-ordering Meeting #7
June 25, 11:30am ET Interop demos, multiple schemas per node, asset handling Meeting #6
June 4, 11:30am ET Discussing the extensibility model Meeting #5
May 21, 11:30am ET Discussions on the initial spec Meeting #4
April 30, 1:30pm ET Discussions on the initial spec Meeting #3
April 16, 12:30 ET Defining interop and a minimal format Meeting #2
March 26, 12:30 ET OCWG Kickoff Meeting #1