Mutability of Annotation.ns

[jmoore]

The "Annotation.name" field is currently mutable unlike the rest of annotations. This is an easy fix and requires no DB changes, but perhaps this actually a feature.

What this would allow is 'hiding' or 'promoting' annotations/tags by changing the namespace they are in.

hiding

Once a tag has been used by others,

  leroysImage.linkAnnotation( leroysTag );
  leroysTag.linkAnnotation( joshsDescription );

then it can no longer be deleted. But Leroy could do this:

  leroysTag.setName( "http://example.com/deleted" );

promoting

Or alternatively, if leroysTag has become very popular, it could be promoted via:

  leroysTag.setName( "http://openmicroscopy.org/tags/2008" );

[jmoore]

r2259 renames name to ns.

[jmoore]

This is certainly how we are shipping milestone:3.0-Beta3. Unfortunately we'll only know if this is a problem, once the users really start using it. Let's hope it's a good "feature".