How to add more detailed information to your plugin

[midora]

Do you like to provide more detailed information about your plugin to the user of Paint.NET 4?
If the answer is 'yes' then you should continue to read.

All plugins which are not built-in to Paint.NET 4 are showing a small puzzle image to the right of the menu entry.
If the user hovers the mouse over the plugin menu entry then a tool tip pops up showing information about
the plugin. If the plugin does not offer additional information you will just see the location of the plugin
in the file system.

To offer additional information your plugin has to add and implement the IPluginSupportInfo interface.

Add the interface to your effect class:
 

    [PluginSupportInfo(typeof(MyEffect))]
    public sealed class MyEffect
        : PropertyBasedEffect, IPluginSupportInfo

Compiling your code will throw errors that some methods of the interface are not implemented:

        DisplayName, Version, Author, Copyright, WebsiteUri

Here is an example of an implementation which takes some information out of the assembly. To access the assembly
 

        using System.Reflection;

has to be added. And now the methods:
 

        public string DisplayName
        {
            get
            {
                return ((AssemblyProductAttribute)base.GetType().Assembly.GetCustomAttributes(typeof(AssemblyProductAttribute), false)[0]).Product;
            }
        }

        public Version Version
        {
            get
            {
                return base.GetType().Assembly.GetName().Version;
            }
        }

        public string Author
        {
            get
            {
                return "Barbarella";
            }
        }
        public string Copyright
        {
            get
            {
                return ((AssemblyCopyrightAttribute)base.GetType().Assembly.GetCustomAttributes(typeof(AssemblyCopyrightAttribute), false)[0]).Copyright;
            }
        }

        public Uri WebsiteUri
        {
            get
            {
                return new Uri("http://forums.getpaint.net/index.php?/forum/7-plugins-publishing-only/");
            }
        }

An other way to implement the plugin info is to use a seperate class:
 

    public class MyPluginSupportInfo : IPluginSupportInfo
    {
        public string DisplayName
        {
            get
            {
                return ((AssemblyProductAttribute)base.GetType().Assembly.GetCustomAttributes(typeof(AssemblyProductAttribute), false)[0]).Product;
            }
        }

        public Version Version
        {
            get
            {
                return base.GetType().Assembly.GetName().Version;
            }
        }

        public string Author
        {
            get
            {
                return "Barbarella";
            }
        }
        public string Copyright
        {
            get
            {
                return ((AssemblyCopyrightAttribute)base.GetType().Assembly.GetCustomAttributes(typeof(AssemblyCopyrightAttribute), false)[0]).Copyright;
            }
        }

        public Uri WebsiteUri
        {
            get
            {
                return new Uri("http://forums.getpaint.net/index.php?/forum/7-plugins-publishing-only/");
            }
        }
    }

In this case you have to add a reference to this class and not to the effect class.
 

    [PluginSupportInfo(typeof(MyPluginSupportInfo))]

So now let your plugin tell us more about it...




 

[BoltBait]

CodeLab does this for you automatically with the information you enter on the "Save as DLL" screen.

 

This was added in version 1.0 of CodeLab which was published on April 28, 2008.