Persistent text labels

[kheffah]

When "label" is turned on in the UI, the interactive label text box follows the mouse showing information about each annotation element the mouse is pointing to (see image). Sometimes it is desirable to see all labels at once (just the label of each element, without the other info) as copy-able text (geojs allows this, although not copy-able) or at least to be able to use some keyboard shortcut to "de-couple" the current label from mouse movement so that its information can be copied.

Why is this relevant? In my project I'm creating a gallery of images and annotations (using large image and/or VIPS) for rapid review by the pathologist, and if they'd like to further examine a specific field, they should be able to either copy-paste or directly click the label URL, which points to the source slide from which the field came. Currently, this is not possible.

[kheffah]

@manthey Is this a simple thing to do or is it more of a "need to edit a whole bunch of files and parameters here and there" kind of enhancement?

[manthey]

There are two different things here: sticky labels that stay present despite mouse movement so you can copy from them, and showing labels on all elements.

Showing labels as all elements via the "popover" style won't work (or at least not well) if there are more than a few hundred annotations. We could have a threshold where under that number would be allowed. This would probably be implemented as another checkbox ("Labels" could be used for this and ""Hover Info" for the existing behavior, perhaps). Showing all labels as non-selectable text could work (even with a huge number of elements).

It would be a small work to make the Labels check box have three states (rather than off/on, off/on/sticky). The sticky mode would leave the box open (e.g., when it vanishes now it would just stay with whatever information it had). You could then select the text within the box.

[kheffah]

It would be a small work to make the Labels check box have three states (rather than off/on, off/on/sticky). The sticky mode would leave the box open (e.g., when it vanishes now it would just stay with whatever information it had). You could then select the text within the box.

Thank you so much for your help David. Yes indeed, that simple option would be ideal!! Maybe when the sticky mode is activated the label only shows when the user wants it to, say when they press control then double left-click the annotation, but it says on unless the user repeats the action for the same annotation or un-checks the "label" checkbox.