Passing it on · Chapter 22

Saving and bringing in JSON Canvas

JSON Canvas is an open file format for canvases. nexlore and Obsidian write it, and nexcanvas reads and writes it too. That way a board moves from one app to the other and back again.

Saving

In the board's menu you find Save as JSON Canvas. Without photos and files you get a .canvas file, and with them a ZIP in which they lie in the folder attachments/.

What the other apps do not know, such as drawings, lines with a loose end, shapes, rotation, background and title, nexcanvas puts into a block of its own. The other apps leave it alone, and when the file comes back, everything is there again.

Bringing in

• Into an open board: the board's menu, Bring in a JSON Canvas. The content lands around the middle of the view, and nexcanvas tells you how many things it brought in.
• As a new board: when you create a board, From a file …. Without a name of your own, the board takes the title from the file or its file name.

A text card becomes a note in the nearest of the seven note colours, a group becomes a frame, and a file card fetches the photo or file of the same name from the ZIP. If a file is missing, a note stands in its place.

Limits

A file to bring in may be four times as big as the largest allowed file, so 200 MB by default. It may hold up to 5,000 cards, and a single .canvas file may be 16 MB.