Improving Fundamental Layer Models

napari’s layer model has been used successfully as the foundation for over 50 plugins to date. napari exposes seven layer types, representing different kinds of data. Although these layers have served the community well, this team aims to make the plugins comprehensively foundational for all kinds of data available in n-dimensional imaging.

Layers are the fundamental substrate on which napari plugins are built. Without a comprehensive way to represent all data types that plugin developers need, napari is unable to accommodate entire categories of plugins. A graph is a fundamental data structure in many scientific contexts, currently extremely clunky to represent in napari. By adding a Graph layer, this proposal enables a family of scientific work not previously possible within napari.