Databases Reference
In-Depth Information
Figure 2-29. Plug-in Information section
Help Text (for the Plug-In)
It is recommended that you include any instructions in the Help Text section for the plug-in as a whole,
as shown in Figure 2-30. The Help Text section can include both plain text and HTML markup. You can
also include additional information, such as license information and documentation, in the Help Text
section as well.
Figure 2-30. Plug-in Help Text section
Licensing
You can create plug-ins to give away, possibly in support of marketing your services. You can also create
plug-ins to sell. The plug-in Help Text section mentioned in the preceding section is an excellent place
to place your license terms, or at least to reference them.
Some plug-in developers prefer to publish their work under various
open source
licenses. There are
many different open source licenses, each written with somewhat different end goals in mind. The
following URL is a good source for information on the various open source licenses available:
If you choose to use an open sources license, you can just reference the license name and choose to
include only the URL to that license in the help text for your plug-in. Users can follow the link to the
actual license text if they are interested in the details.
Summary
This chapter covered all the components that make up a plug-in and introduced some of the APIs
required to build a plug-in. In the following chapters, you will build each different type of plug-in, and
that will make use of all the components that were covered in this chapter.
