Meeting № 27 Summary

[devhelpr]

Meeting № 27 Summary

Transcription
Recording

Major Discussion Points

• Integration and Collaboration Between TL Draw and Excalidraw
  Chee demonstrated the ongoing work integrating TL Draw and Excalidraw using the OCIF format, highlighting challenges such as differences in canvas interpretation, color handling, and rotation. The goal is to have stable import/export with OCIF supporting live collaborative editing between these tools.

• Color Mapping and Theme Handling (Dark Mode / Light Mode)
  Significant discussion focused on how to handle color mapping issues between different canvases, including representing stroke and fill colors in dark/light modes. Proposals included using a palette extension with named colors and storing multiple color versions per theme to maintain stability and interoperability.

• Canvas Node and Metadata Enhancements
  The group explored adding a "canvas node" or root node to OCIF to represent global canvas-level settings such as background color, font, and theme metadata. This would also enable attaching palette information and better support for nested canvases and pages.

• Handling Multiple Canvases and Pages
  There was a discussion on supporting multiple canvases (e.g., TL Draw pages) within a single OCIF file. Suggestions included representing pages as notes with page extensions under a root canvas node, allowing different tools to either render pages as separate canvases or as grouped items.

• Challenges with Rotation and Transform Extensions
  Rotation around a fixed origin (usually top-left in TL Draw) and complex transform mappings were identified as sources of compatibility challenges. Confidence was expressed that the new transform extension in OCIF version 0.5 would address these needs, though some issues like jitter due to numerical precision remain.

• Background Patterns and Extensions
  The meeting touched on the complexity of representing background patterns which differ greatly between tools. The consensus was to handle these via custom extensions rather than native support in OCIF until a more standardized method emerges.

• Stability and Round-Trip Editing Goals
  A key aim is ensuring stable round-trip conversions between OCIF and individual canvases, such that importing and re-exporting a file results in no changes. While this is a challenging goal, it was emphasized as essential for single-canvas interoperability.

• LocalFirst Talk Recap and OCIF History
  Chee shared slides and recapped the history and motivation behind OCIF, including it evolving from earlier JSON Canvas work and local-first software ideals. The maturity of OCIF at candidate recommendation stage was acknowledged, along with the growing ecosystem of implementations.

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Action Items

• Continue Developing a Stable TL Draw Language for OCIF
  Focus on building stable import/export primitives with TL Draw first before fully tackling more complex multi-canvas or multi-tool integration.

• Define and Implement Canvas Node and Palette Extensions
  Specify and implement a root canvas node extension to hold metadata such as themes, palettes, and viewport information, enabling better global canvas properties management.

• Work on Theme Handling Across Canvases
  Implement a theme extension with named themes (e.g., dark, light, cute) that allows switching active themes and mapping colors accordingly.

• Add Support for Extending Node Colors by Themes
  Create extensions encapsulating color variants per theme (stroke, fill, text colors, etc.) to support multiple modes within a single OCIF file.

• Continue Round-Trip Stability Improvements
  Collaborate with canvas tool developers (especially TL Draw and Excalidraw) to minimize lossy import/export cycles and improve color and transform accuracy.

• Post Meeting Materials
  Post the TL Draw sketch demo and meeting recording to the Discord channel for broader accessibility, followed by transcript and summary generation by Michael.

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Takeaways

• OCIF is approaching maturity and is able to act as a stable interchange format between multiple canvas tools, though challenges remain around color mapping, theming, transforms, and multi-canvas support.

• Handling themes and palette metadata at the canvas root node level with named colors is a promising approach for cross-tool color consistency and dark/light mode support.

• Round-trip export/import stability is vital for adoption but hard to achieve, requiring deep collaboration with individual canvas tool implementations.

• Extensions in OCIF provide flexibility to handle tool-specific features (e.g., background patterns, advanced colors), balancing standardization with practical tool needs.

• The working group benefits from real-world experimentation (as illustrated by Chee’s TL Draw/Excalidraw demos) to uncover practical interoperability issues and design solutions collaboratively.

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If you need me to format the summarized action items further or want a more detailed technical breakdown, please let me know!