Migration Guide from Overlays to the new Annotation concept

Table of Contents

• How to adapt your code

How to adapt your code

All classes have been renamed from "Overlay" to "Annotation", e.g. the mitk::TextOverlay2D is now mitk::TextAnnotation2D. Most of the interface of mitk::Overlay remains unchanged in mitk::Annotation, but it is no longer registered at the mitk::OverlayManager. Instead, mitk::ManualPlacementAnnotationRenderer and mitk::LayoutAnnotationRenderer are used the register an annotation.

// Old Overlay registration:
overlayManager->AddOverlay(textOverlay3D.GetPointer(), renderer);

// New Annotation registration:
mitk::ManualPlacementAnnotationRenderer::AddAnnotation(textAnnotation3D, renderer);

A single mitk::Annotation is no longer automatically registered in all available RenderWindows. Each mitk::Annotation is shown only once. The user is also responsible for the memory management. When a created mitk::Annotation has no more SmartPointer references, it disappears.

The Layouter concept was implemented in the mitk::LayoutAnnotationRenderer:

// Old way to layout an mitk::Overlay:
verlayManager->AddOverlay(textOverlay.GetPointer());
overlayManager->AddLayouter(
  mitk::Overlay2DLayouter::CreateLayouter(mitk::Overlay2DLayouter::STANDARD_2D_TOPLEFT(), renderer2D).GetPointer());
overlayManager->SetLayouter(textOverlay.GetPointer(), mitk::Overlay2DLayouter::STANDARD_2D_TOPLEFT(), renderer2D);

// New way to layout an mitk::Annotation:
mitk::LayoutAnnotationRenderer::AddAnnotation(textAnnotation, rendererID, mitk::LayoutAnnotationRenderer::TopLeft, 5, 5, 1);
// The layouter gets parameters for margins and the priority for the placement in the RenderWindow corners.