undefined | Better HN

0 pointstg1804y ago0 comments

I tried to use Solid, but having a protocol to store your data did not seem very useful without being able to swap the applications that use them at will. Each application needs to understand not only the Solid protocol, but the format you are using for your data too.

The specification naively says that the data is saved in interoperable formats. Sure, you can store your data in an interoperable data formats, suppose it is JSON, but it is of little use if the various applications do not know how to interpret and manage correctly the information contained therein.

It's been a while, have the applications improved?

0 comments

1 comments · 1 top-level

jeswin4y ago

> Each application needs to understand not only the Solid protocol, but the format you are using for your data too.

I don't think we'll be able to avoid that hurdle; we'll need to make sure that the protocol is really simple.

But having to know the data format of the app itself is to be expected. If an app "instagram-on-solid" stores data in a certain way, the alternate app will need to understand those schemas as well to be compatible. That's how interop has always worked, even in the pre-internet age when we were exchanging files on disk.

> It's been a while, have the applications improved?

I haven't looked at apps in a while - but that was indeed moving very slowly.

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse