Render Canvas objects inside Canvas

Use case or problem

When I put a canvas object inside canvas, I only see an empty frame.

Proposed solution

  1. A preview should be given with a miniature preview of the structure.
  2. It would be great to have a popup feature like it exists with notes: a small version of the respective canvas opening as overlay. It would be great to be able to navigate inside this little window.
  3. Ideally, this would be size-adjustable.

Current workaround (optional)

None as far I know.

19 Likes

How exactly do you put a canvas inside a canvas - even if it does have an empty frame!?

I can’t work this out!

Great idea! Even if it weren’t size adjustable, if it allowed you to zoom in thus revealing the detail of the “embedded” canvas, that would be good too. But, of course being able to scale up the preview of the embedded canvas would be even more helpful. Thanks.

@TheHunch
I just dragged the canvas file from the explorer to a new canvas and it embedded it. It also opens the embedded file when you doubleclick it.

4 Likes

That’s interesting- maybe that’s an indication that actual rendering of the canvas will be coming. There’s probably many UI details to be worked out, such as pulling items from parent canvas to into child canvas, and vice versa. Also the ability to create a new child canvas inside the current canvas (I just tried creating ‘test.canvas’ but it actually creates ‘test.canvas.md’.)

For now, I am pleased with the flexibility of the feature, that I can at least link to other canvases inside a canvas as a means of ‘nesting’ (or drag a canvas from explorer and just have an empty frame for now.)

They’ve done an amazing job with the basic feature set, so the future looks really bright here.

2 Likes

I’m happy to see that I can already link to another canvas from within a canvas. A few more ideas related to sub-canvas support.

  • It might be nice if when I right click on a card on a canvas I had the option “Convert to Canvas” as well as the current option “Convert to File”
  • It might be nice if I could drop cards onto a sub-canvas to move them to that sub-canvas.
  • Rendering a preview of the sub-canvas would be very nice! Alternatively, the option to set a cover image for the canvas would be useful.
4 Likes

Not only right-clicking on a card, but right-clicking a selection of multiple items and converting to a canvas would be great as a nesting technique. On the current canvas, there could be a card with a link to the new canvas (or an actual canvas embed if that feature is added later.)

All of this can be reasonably easily accomplished with simple cut and then paste into a new canvas, but would be nice for working with canvases.

1 Like

A wireframe preview will be implemented 1.1.5

5 Likes

Two aspects of the canvas within canvas discussion and feature requests come to mind:

  1. treating canvasses as graphical property laden layers
  2. treating them as multidimensional objects with embedded relational notes, sections, and blocks.

dope!

when you navigate into the embedded canvas, is there a way to see in which canvas it is embedded? Something like incoming links… but it doesn’t appear anywhere.

It would be great if one could easily navigate “down” like it is possible now but also “up”…

It would be cool if a canvas inside another canvas simply looked the same as a “Group” inside a canvas. In other words, it’s rendering all the objects as if it were part of the same canvas, but has a border around it like a group.

Work-around could be a script when opening a canvas to temporarily swap out the embedded canvas

{“id”:“8afb3ddca6ce3040”,“x”:-583,“y”:-902,“width”:831,“height”:503,“type”:“file”,“file”:“My board.canvas”}

with the coordinate/scale adjusted items from the other canvas file, wrapped in a “group” box. Then swap them back when you “save”. Or if it’s a read-only view that’s much easier to just run a one-way copy

2 Likes

If you think about a Canvas not as a canvas but as a frame, you can put a canvas inside a canvas. This would solve the problem of the canvas not having frames without creating confusion.

Wireframe preview gives an idea of the general cards layout - but beyond that it’s just a link (speaking functionality wise).

If we can at least get the card-labels (or the first-header in case of a non-file card) that would make it much more useful - for the present.

Another improvement, looks wise - if we can get a scaled-down “screenshot” of the canvas instead of just the layout.

The long-term expectation remains first-class, editable, nestable canvases.

1 Like

Given how limited are the drawing options as of today, I was expecting to get more complex diagrams using nested canvas. But having just a wireframe makes it completely imposible. Can’t wait to see this feature implemented, and the canvas evolve a bit more.
I like how nice and easy they are to layout and visually pleasing, but I’m surely missing features.

I actually came here to request this.

Right now, you can embed canvases inside of Markdown docs, as well as inside of other canvases.

This is a huge deal for things like C4 modelling.

But also, the ability to embed a Canvas inside of Markdown doc would hugely improve the Presentation Mode if they showed up in your presentations!

This could simply be an extension of the “Page Preview” Core Plugin, and you could even have an option to limit the “Depth”, so that you don’t render 20 Canvases inside one doc and kill performance, if your machine isn’t capable.

1 Like

Are there any plans for rendering nested canvas as yet?
With the option to set a max depth for performance in page preview maybe?

I also want to toss a vote in for the idea of infinitely nested canvases (or wormholes to each other). As a visual thinker I’ve dreamed of having something like that for ages.

Yes, absolutely! Also, it would be great if links inside canvas would allow to be clicked directly without clicking twice. Maybe with a modifier like CTRL