# OMERO.figure plans

** TODO: Share zoom link: https://openmicroscopy-org.zoom.us/j/86210921466?pwd=SoT6BwmblSbX4A5ebD5KcPmwcfwgMW.1

Since the development of OMERO.figure is becoming more distributed, we felt like it was a good idea to improve communication about future plans, to avoid conflicts, reduce duplicated/wasted effort etc.

It would be good to hear what you're planning for OMERO.figure in terms of:

- Features that you're thinking of working on?
- Over what time-frame? e.g. funding for next year or more?

For OME:
- We are mostly in "maintenance" mode for OMERO.figure, apart from
- Plan to support OME-Zarr (see below)
- Bug-fixes
- *Maybe* other features if we get strong feedback (e.g. from a workshop) that something is needed, and we feel we have time.
- Having looked over existing issues, no plans to work on any of them in the near future. Bugs are mostly kinda "edge-case" and features are nice ideas but no time (or too niche) to work on them, unless requested by more users. EDIT: maybe [Export script version checking/update](https://github.com/ome/omero-figure/pull/610)

For Tom: QUAREP-LiMI as reference https://www.nature.com/articles/s41592-023-01987-9
- Colorbar (PR open)
- smart labels: add support for acquisition metadata, well names,
- dynamic key-value pairs (e.g. [kv; key=<key>; ns=<ns>])
- load from the server e.g. when figure loads or on "refresh" button

For Rémy
- Label on ROIs (on going)
- Arrow scale bug fix - different thickness for image vv figure
- Refresh image when updating channel names

## OME-Zarr support:
"OMERO.figure without OMERO"! - See https://github.com/will-moore/figure/pull/5 - this PR is temporarily open against *my* repo since I have setup netlify there. Working OK for adding OME-Zarr images to figure but don't yet handle 'big' images - will need a fair bit more work. Also other workflow questions like how to save/open figures.

## Contributing docs:
I have [started to work on a PR](https://github.com/ome/omero-figure/pull/610) to add some guidelines for contributing:
- Before starting work, create an Issue and outline the feature.
- I'll add some "development" tips to the docs, based on the experience from the recent PRs.
- Testing guidelines: things to check before a PR is ready for review

## Code style guides / checkers
Some people like code style to be linted, but this is more work to introduce to an existing project. For now, try to format new code in a similar style to exising code!

## 2025-01-24 Notes:

- JM: Do we need regular OMERO.figure meetings?
- Will: I don't think so. GitHub issues etc provide enough for communication as long as we create issues early and add details etc prior to starting work.
- Tom & Remy: OK
- JM: could keep the community informed e.g. image.sc and/or bsky.
- Will: do we need figure-scope Shapes, Labels etc? Lots of requests for this feature, but a fair bit of work.
- All: yes, people do want this. Remy not planning to work on this yet.
- JM: useful to have a "lite" devspace for more rapid figure testing by contributors? Tom: yes
- Petr: timeIncrement bug was also found by users in Dundee. Could have caught this by testing more images on merge-ci
- Tom: notes for getting setup: omero-web etc would help. Remy: me too. I have link from docker to my local figure repo to test build.
- Better notes for Docker setup would help.
- Tom: what about "chat" messaging? On zulip? Let's give that a try.