Solid Ecosystem Diagram

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Hello Solid Community. I am new to Solid and am trying to understand the key concepts. I created a Google Diagram to help me visualize the Solid ecosystem, and I thought it might be useful to others as well. I am sure the diagram contains some inaccuracies, so I am hoping others can contribute to its accuracy and completeness. Future features could also be added to it.

Here is the diagram. Please feel free to change anything you wish…

Notes: 1. Sub-diagrams could be created, if needed. 2. I can transfer ownership to someone else. 3. The diagram could be migrated to another tool, if preferred.

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Hi @Brent
I’m so excited to see this! I’m trying to do something very similar, to be a part of the “onboarding”, aka “getting started”, project, which you can find on Github, and which will be hosted (for now at least), on Github Pages. There’s not too much to see yet, but I’m working pretty on hard on three things that I want to incorporate into that project very soon. Those three things are:

  1. a list of links to documentation that will eventually be searchable and filterable,
  2. an AI tool for answering questions about Solid, that has a large indexed knowledge base of docs (in development at my personal site, jonwilson.dev–it’s currently using “Danswer” an open source tool for indexing and searching docs, and OpenAI’s ChatGPT 3.5 Turbo API), and
  3. an interactive diagram that can be expanded to show different levels of detail and includes links to tutorials and other sources–I’m not sure exactly how to make it interactive, but that’s the goal. I have a jpeg of my first version in a pod here, and if you’d like, please feel free to visit the Miro board where I’m working on it.

And you’re also thinking about the concept of sub-diagrams, which is very cool–I think that is probably similar to what I mean by interactive.

As you can see by my diagram, I’m not an expert in diagramming, or designing things in general (I’m a full-stack developer, but don’t typically work on designs). But I do think Miro seems like a good place for building diagrams and collaborating. If you’d like to join this effort, please let me know, and I’ll send you an invitation to be an editor of the Miro board.

I’d like to try to: 1) incorporate some of the details you’ve included in your diagram around reading/writing to pods, 2) make a really nice, clean diagram compared to the one I currently have, which is kind of busy 3) figure out how, or if it’s even possible(??), to add some interactivity (like zooming in and out, expanding/hiding text, etc.).

If you have any suggestions, or would just like to jump in and start creating something, please feel free to do so (although, you’ll need an invite from me to be able to start editing on the board, so let me know if you’d like one).

One more thing, @NoelDeMartin shared some slides with me, including a few diagrams that look like they’ll be pretty helpful.

Oh, and I’ll mention @SharonStrats here, too, as she’s been interested in the onboarding project. Sharon, let me know if you’d like an invite to my Miro board, also.

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Hi @jonwilson, Yes, it makes perfect sense that diagrams like these would be part of a Getting Started guide. I looked at your diagram, and I see a lot of similarities. I’m open to using whatever diagramming tool works best for the Solid community overall. It would be great if some of the key Solid architects could be involved in validating the accuracy of the concepts that are represented in the diagrams too.

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OK, I have re-created the Google Diagram in your Miro board. I assume we can probably consider this topic thread closed?

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Also, feel free to use the diagram however you like. Once any of the concepts are integrated into other diagrams created by the team, you can go ahead and delete the one I created.

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Awesome, thanks Brent!

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For anyone who comes across this conversation and would like to view the diagrams we’re discussing, here’s a link to view it on a Miro board (and please let me know if you’d like to be a contributor): Miro Board

@Brent I used your diagram and my diagram, and mixed them in a couple different ways. It was very helpful for me, to think about different possibilities–different layouts and styles, and different amounts of detail. Also, I didn’t realize that apps can register to get a WebID, but after seeing it in your diagram, I did find a reference to that in the official spec.

At first, I was confused about the section in your diagram under the app, the sections about aggregating the views and the parts under that. But I think you’re showing how it works if you use the SolidOS libraries (like SoildUI); IIRC, those libraries can work with any app, but they are optional–I think they were specifically created for SolidOS. I think the only thing an app has to have (to be a Solid app) is a way to read and write to a pod (the option I’ve used is Inrupt’s solid-client, but I think there are other options even for reading/writing).

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Thanks @jonwilson I would love an invite!

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Greetings, documentarians!
I am new to Solid, and very excited about its potential. I have much to figure out. As I do, I am willing and able to share what I learn with other newcomers. I am less a developer, more a (retired) systems and networking pro, but I can write and would like to contribute to the onboarding guide starting next month.
I am watching the GitHub project. Will the issues and discussions there be the best way to collaborate going forward? If there is some other channel I should be on, please let me know; otherwise, I will see you in the issues section there in January.
p.s. the Diataxis framework is interesting and new to me. I look forward to studying and following those best practices.

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Hi @nborson !

The short answer is yes, definitely, the Github repo will be the focus of activity for the Onboarding group, and watching it will be sufficient to prevent you from missing any important announcements or activity.

For example, I hope to do at least three things soon to help people get more involved, and all of those things will either be centered in the repo, or announced there (via Discussions or by updates to the README). Those things are: 1) create “good first issues”, 2) complete coding a form to let everyone help add and organize documentation links, and 3) schedule regular online meetings.

By the way, keep in mind, the repo itself just has the code for our Onboarding site, which is (for now), hosted by Github Pages, at Getting Started with Solid. So, for example, the form that I’m working on, will be found there.

Having said that, we do have a chat channel on Matrix; most Solid-related chatting happens in several rooms on Matrix. The solid rooms can be found at https://matrix.to/#/#solid_project:matrix.org, and the specific room for our onboarding group is https://matrix.to/#/#solid_onboarding:matrix.org

In case you haven’t used Matrix before, when you click either of those links above, it will ask you to “choose an app to continue”. In my experience, Cinny has a pretty good user interface, and I would recommend it.

But…it’s not necessary to be in the chat, (and TBH, it can sometimes be a distraction); my intention will be to put all of the important announcements and activity and the most relevant discussions in the repo, and use the chat for secondary things that don’t need to be announced to everyone.

For example, maybe someone will have a question about the Diataxis system, and we might have a long chat about the philosophy of organizing things. But, at the end of the conversation, let’s say we reach a conclusion about how to organize our documents. In that case, the relevant conclusion that we come to will be incorporated wherever it naturally fits in our repo (as an issue, a discussion, in the README, etc.), but the rest of the chat, which is not vital for everyone to read through or participate in, would remain in the Matrix room.

(Maybe someday, if that theory doesn’t work very well in practice, we’ll try to move all conversation to the Discussions on Github.)

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@jonwilson , thanks for that excellent orientation; that gives me a great head start. I hope to have some time in the next two weeks to educate and orient myself.

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