stephenwf
commented
2 years ago ME is aware that the manifest and the anno pages are separate resource
This is true in the Vault, but if you make changes either the page would become embedded or need to be saved - like you mention. I think, and this can be tested, if you load a manifest and then an external annotation page - and then serialise it out of vault it will inline the annotation page.
We need to make the configurable at least, at the vault serialisation level.
tomcrane
This is not a Task yet, it needs some thought.
Current designs don't distinguish between internal and external AnnotationPages. External annotation pages are really #72 whereas internal anno pages require an in-situ editor, as in the designs.
If you load an existing manifest into ME, e.g., a Wellcome one, it's VERY likely that canvas.annotations properties (if present) are lists of one or more external annotation pages, rather than them being inline in the Manifest. In MVP, are they editable as annotations? Or just as an external resource? Sometimes you will want to connect an external anno page, and NOT edit them.
But if you are creating a manifest from scratch, and then adding annotations to it, it will be much easier for our MVP to hold those annotations inline. This also makes slideshows, guided-viewing etc self-contained JSON files.
Later we can offer more flexibility here: later, ME is aware that the manifest and the anno pages are separate resource that you are editing simultaneously, and knows when it can save them - but there's a jump from just loading and persisting manifests, to loading and persisting manifests AND THEIR DEPENDENT FILES. MVP should just be the former.