I recently joined the alpha program and really like the general approach of Anytype especially when it comes to local first, open source and the semantic architecture. However I still have some big unanswered questions and ideas about it.
Since Anytype want’s to become open source I was wondering if that just applies to the Software or if there will be an open format accessible for other software through an API?
First I thought that format should be Markdown like in Obsidian or Logseq but then I guess it might be quite limiting and we should overcome Markdown at some point. The Markdown philosophy is powerful when it comes to formatting and should be used inside the editor with some extensions but I would say it is too limited for the semantic approach. I found this very interesting article on that topic: Thoughts on Markdown
Especially when it comes to the semantic approach of Anytype I think we need an open standard to achieve powerful interoperability with other platforms, tools and apps. Recently I stumbled upon the Block Protocol and I think their idea of an open standard to create data-driven blocks might be the perfect fit for Anytype. What do you think Community and @Anytype-Team?
Hey, welcome! This is a great line of thinking, one I am also definitely interested in. I agree that markdown is not the ideal interop format for anything beyond the basics (it doesn’t even have a mechanism for encoding block position, i.e. indent or columns). I do think it is one possible format for a base level of interchange. But we need more.
While I think Anytype may have to maintain some unique blocks and functions due to its particular architecture, at the very least I think it should support Block Protocol. I haven’t seen a lot of support for it elsewhere yet, but such things can be a bit chicken-and-egg: someone needs to start supporting it even before others do, and that initial support will help convince others. Anytype could be one team forging that path.
It would also be interesting to know if there are other efforts like Block Protocol. I’m not aware of them, but with all the block-based apps happening lately, it seems quite possible others are thinking and working along similar lines for interop.
Thank you for you thoughts. Markdown is definitely limiting especially if you need to have collaborative functions working over p2p network. The block protocols is good, however is also limiting. We are going to open our protocol which everyone will be able to use for any kind of apps, it’ll be able to handle ACL over p2p sync. It’s protobuf based proto.