Tips on Using the New Canvas Feature in ChatGPT for Document Writing

ChatGPT is developed in a very agile method.... Where they often release a MVP (No, not a most valuable player, but a minimum viable product). The new canvas feature is clearly like that, although it still is so much better than the past. But, from playing with it just a little, I have found a few issues and work arounds that I hope will save you some frustration.

The Canvas Currently Can't Handle Graphics

While it says it uses Markdown, the canvas currently doesn't seem to be able to handle graphics. You can upload graphics to the session, and if you make a .DOCX or .PDF at the end, it can put those graphics in those... BUT, I don't recommend trying to generate a .DOCX or .PDF! (See below). I suspect this will get fixed in the future... hopefully it won't take a full year :-)

It Does Not Put your Full Canvas in a DOCX

I was writing a letter of recommendation for a student of mine, and thought that this would be a perfect test to see how the Canvas could be used. When I was done with my document, which was about 3 pages, I asked for it to produce a DOCX. It made a shorter document. Then I asked for it to make the DOCX verbatim of what I wrote on the Canvas, and still it didn't produce a document file that had everything. This is obviously a pretty big bug, and I suspect it will be fixed fairly quickly. But I wanted to mention it, because I didn't realize it had the problem at first, and so almost sent a document that was wrong!

There is thankfully an easy fix. Just copy and paste the Canvas contents into Word or other word processor.

P.S. - I also tried making a PDF, and it really messed it up, having to correct its code several time, and in the end outputting raw ASCII markdown in the PDF... I didn't mess around with it more, as I needed to edit the file so I could put in those graphics, so having a PDF wasn't going to do me much good.

But, with These Problems, it Still is Amazing AF

While these issues were a bit frustrating, they were still minor compared to the mind blowing fact that AI can do all of this stuff! For writing the letter, I copied and pasted in some of the interactions I had with the student I was writing the letter for and his complete interaction in the classroom forums, and it was able to help me see where his clear strengths were, and give examples. This would have taken me a lot longer, without the help of ChatGPT, and while it could have been done without Canvas, the interactive ability to work in Canvas was really valuable, and is overall a huge jump in what ChatGPT can do.

And Next....

I am also playing around with ChatGPT's Canvas for Writing Python. This has even more bugs, but also more opportunities to do amazing things. As I actually figure out some solutions to my issues, I'll post an article on that next.