Interplanetary Mind Map demo

[xavivives]

Demos

Hi, last week, we were exposing some ideas to Victor, and he suggested to do a demo at the IPFS hands-on call of the tool that we've been building.

The quality of the call was a little choppy and it was suggested to record a video and add an issue here. So we did a little video demo.

You can also play around with the latest version

Why & where

Finding out why we're doing this is part of the project itself, and we're in a process of dumping our brains into markdowns.

The tool was originally called ipld-mindmap, but we recently did an overall merging/renaming of repositories.

In any case, code, documentation and reasoning live now under the same roof:
https://github.com/interplanetarymindmap/mind-map

Help

David, at the end of the call, asked, how can we help you with?

I'm extremely grateful for all your work and approach to long-term solutions. I understand that some stuff is not ready yet, and it needs its time. No rush :)

Most of my time around the IPFS/IPLD repos have been trying to wrap my head around the IPLD format itself and also around the links. Here there is some stuff that I would love to have...

Solid specs with nice documentation:

• For example, the IPlD specs repo has an OUT OF DATE in the title, but there is no alternative link.
• I had to read tons of issues and discussions to kind of get an idea of what the state of the art is.
• The uncertainty of not knowing if I'm checking the right stuff takes a lot of energy.

A unified protocol/format agnostic resolver for Merkle-paths/CIDs:

• Right now I need to parse the link to figure out if its an IPNS or an IPFS link.
• And I can only resolve an IPLD object using the ipfs.dag.get API.
• So first I need to abstract the CID because of the ipfs.dag.get API only supports CIDs
• And then check if the CID is a dag-cbor or a dag-pb, to know if I can use the API.
• If its none I use ipfs.files.cat API (with an IPFS link)
• Otherwise, I use the dag.get API (with the cid)

Typed IPLD objects

• I want to eventually represent any IPLD object on the mindmap.
• Knowing how it is formatted can lower the number of assumptions I need to do render it coherently.
• It would be nice to know if the object is an Ethereum block (independently of the serialization format) for example.
• It would be nice something around the lines of self-descriving Multiformat (no idea how)

Strictly typed JS implementations

• I've seen discussions around Flow vs Typescript in the issues.
• I don't think they're used anywhere though.

Your input

• In the form of pull-requests/ideas/references/corrections...
• We're in Berlin for Web3 summit and we will be in Prague for Devcon. If any of you are around, we would love to catch up.

Aloha!

[novusabeo]

Really cool project. Having trouble accessing the latest version though at the link above. Just white

[xavivives]

Try long press to create a new text.
Here there is some minimal instructions, since it is not very intuitive right now...
https://github.com/interplanetarymindmap/mind-map/blob/master/instructions.md