All of the "plugins" I have found revolve around supporting and or rendering different file formats or image manipulation. Which is fine but not what I am looking for.
Paint.net as an image editor is fine.
What I need to do is "overlay" the graphics image with "components."
The components would represent guages, thermometers, lightswitches, fans, pumps, etc.
Within the editor I need to assign "point names" to these components.
At the "save" function, the static image is saved in one format ( bmp, png, jpeg, etc ) but the "dynamic" definitions must be saved in another: either in a binary file or in a collection of sql database items.
The "components" must remain "components" on subsequent edits, not morphed into the background image.
A display utility to read these image and component structures, access the database and render the final image, refresh as database values change, is a separate project, beyond the scope of this post.
So my question is the best way to go about this. For starters, I suspect I would create a DLL that creates a new menu item on the Paint.net menu bar. That's my first stumbling block: how to import a new "menu item?"
Also, I presume the "component" placement would be done as a "layer" so as to keep separate from the static background image.
Words of wisdom, particularly how to create and import a new Menu item?
Boyd
