Representation of annotations in a GFA2/GFA3 file

[oakeley]

Annotations are like street metadata. Magnification is key. At the level of the chromosome we need "telomere, centromere, band number" zoom in and it becomes chromatin domain then gene then exon then SNP.
This level of annotation zoom is a feature of Google Earth too where the tiles of the map are represented on a Hilbert curve (a 1D fractal line that retains spatial information from two or more spatial dimensions). As you zoom in, Google Maps can display and model the graph at the correct resolution (use highways between cities, main roads as you approach destination then side streets and house numbers). The annotations of any detail are linked to the Hilbert curve. If the GFA3 could represent a Hilbert-like embedding then it would make downstream tools to use pangenome data much easier to write.