Announcing JSON Canvas: an open file format for infinite canvas data
kepano on March 11, 2024Today we’re excited to announce that theObsidian Canvas file format is now calledJSON Canvas and has its own site, specification, and open source resources atjsoncanvas.org.
JSON Canvas can be implemented freely as an import, export, and storage format forany app or tool. All the resources associated withJSON Canvas are open source under theMIT license, and can be foundon GitHub.
For therelease of Obsidian Canvas we created the.canvas format with an open spec. We created this format because we felt it was essential to follow theprinciples that have guided us since the start. Your Obsidian data should always be stored locally, accessible offline, completely in your control, in open file formats that areeasy to retrieve and read. For notes we achieve this by using plain text.md files with Markdown syntax, a widely supported format. However, infinite canvas data does not yet have a similarly established format.
While infinite canvas tools are not new, they have been quicklygrowing in popularity. TheJSON Canvas format was created in hopes of providing longevity, readability, interoperability, and extensibility to data created with infinite canvas apps. The format is designed to be easy to parse and give users ownership over their data.
TheJSON Canvas spec is currently atversion 1.0. The spec is relatively conservative, it does not support every feature that canvas apps may want to implement. However we think it is a useful starting point to build upon, and we plan to continue improving on it over time.