What is TETRAS-IIIF?
TETRAS-IIIF is a suite of plugins and tools for Mirador 4, developed primarily by Tetras Libre SARL, a French open-source company. The ecosystem extends Mirador with annotation editing, video support, and multi-user collaboration capabilities.
These tools address limitations of the original mirador-annotations plugin and provide a modern foundation built on React 18/19 and MUI 5/7.
Mirador Annotation Editor (MAE)
Overview
Mirador Annotation Editor (MAE) is an annotation creation and editing plugin for Mirador 4. It serves as a successor to mirador-annotations and is released under the Apache 2.0 license.
- Demo: https://tetras-iiif.github.io/mirador-annotation-editor/
- npm:
mirador-annotation-editor
Key Features
Konva.js Drawing Engine
While mirador-annotations used Paper.js, MAE adopts Konva.js for drawing operations. It supports rectangles, ellipses, polygons, freehand drawing, text overlays, and image overlays.
Template System
A distinctive feature of MAE is its template system. Annotation structures can be pre-defined, enabling consistent formatting across annotations. For example, a comment template automatically generates an HTML structure with heading and body text.
Dublin Core Metadata
Annotations can include Dublin Core metadata fields such as creator, date, and language, making annotation management and discovery more systematic.
Adapter Architecture
MAE provides a flexible adapter mechanism for annotation persistence. Local storage is built in, and connections to IIIF annotation servers are also supported.
Cross-Manifest Linking
Annotations can link across different manifests, enabling the construction of annotation networks that span multiple IIIF documents.
MAEV (Mirador Annotation Editor for Video)
MAEV extends MAE’s capabilities to video content. It supports both spatial and temporal targeting for annotations on IIIF Presentation API 3.0 video resources.
- Demo: https://tetras-iiif.github.io/mirador-annotation-editor-video/
- License: GPL-3.0
MAEV requires the mirador-video fork instead of standard Mirador 4.
mirador-video
mirador-video is a fork of Mirador 4 that adds video display, annotation, and filtering support. It can be installed as an npm alias:
npm install mirador@npm:mirador-video@^1.2.8
Mirador Multi User (MMU)
Mirador Multi User (MMU) transforms Mirador into a collaborative multi-user workspace with user management, media collection management, project snapshots, and an admin dashboard.
- Live instance: https://app.mirador-multi-user.com/
- License: AGPL-3.0
The backend is built with NestJS and MariaDB, deployable via Docker/Caddy.
Technology Comparison
| Feature | mirador-annotations | MAE | MAEV |
|---|---|---|---|
| Drawing Library | Paper.js | Konva.js | Konva.js |
| React Version | 16/17 | 18 | 18 |
| UI Library | MUI 4 | MUI 5 | MUI 5 |
| Templates | No | Yes | Yes |
| Video Support | No | No | Yes |
| Metadata | Basic | Dublin Core | Dublin Core |
| License | Apache 2.0 | Apache 2.0 | GPL-3.0 |
Summary
The TETRAS-IIIF ecosystem significantly advances Mirador’s annotation capabilities. MAE provides template-based annotation editing, MAEV adds video annotation support, and MMU enables multi-user collaboration. Each component is independently usable yet designed to work together. The project is actively maintained and represents an important evolution for IIIF-based annotation workflows.