HIPE Plug-in User Manual

This is the user manual for HIPE Plug-ins. It describes what plug-ins are, where to get them, how to install them, and how to get rid of them.

If you are interested in creating plug-ins yourself, please refer to the Plug-in Developer's Manual [TBD]. For the motivation behind design choices made when building the Plug-in Framework for HIPE, see the Design Document.

Introduction: What's a plug-in and what's it for

Plug-ins are intended to make it easy to share software (written in Java and/or Jython) and to share data in the form of LocalStores. A secondary purpose is to allow existing applications to be "plugged into HIPE": A plug-in for an existing application can add menus and menu items to HIPE. The user can then use those menus to use the application, within HIPE.

The plug-in framework was designed to make it very easy for users to install and use plug-ins, while at the same time making it simple for creators of plug-ins to produce the plug-ins. In most cases, creating a plug-in is a matter of zipping or jarring whatever it is you want to share, and putting it online. The user gets the URL of the plug-in, puts it into HIPE and hits install. In many case (nearly all, I hope), this will be enough. Clearly, it will require more work to create a plug-in that adds menus, Views, Perspectives, and so on, but for the user this doesn't make a difference. Installation is one-click in principle. A plug-in developer may construct a custom installer for a plug-in allowing more configuration, but requiring more clicks from the user.

How to get plug-ins

• Describe where plug-ins can be found and installation procedure.

Anyone can be put a plug-in online anywhere, but we have created a Wiki page that is intended as a repository, or at least a starting point for finding the plugins. The Wiki is DpHipePlugins. It is not necessary to bookmark or remember this Wiki. If you select Plug-ins from the Tools menu in HIPE... [to be continued]

Plug-ins in your system

Describe where the plug-ins can be found on disk, what the structure is like and what effects this has: Kept when upgrading HIPE, but also shared between versions.

-- PaulBalm - 16 Aug 2010