How to create plugins for Paratext

Question

I am interested in developing a custom plugin or two for Paratext.

I have downloaded the demo plugins from the GitHub repository (https://github.com/ubsicap/paratext_demo_plugins) and have Visual Studio set up, but I am unable to locate the Paratext Plugin API DLL files (such as PluginInterfaces.dll or Paratext.PluginInterfaces.dll) that are needed to build and develop plugins.

Could you please help me with the following:

1. How can I obtain the Paratext Plugin API development files/DLLs?
2. Are there any registration requirements or developer program I need to join?
3. Is there additional documentation available for plugin development beyond the demo plugins?

I tried to build the demo plugin "ReferencePluginQ" from the GitHub repository, and received errors saying that the following components are missing: PluginInterfaces.dll and EmbeddedUiPluginInterfaces.dll

Could you please provide these files or direct me to where I can download them?

I am using Paratext 9 and have Visual Studio Community edition installed.

Answer 1

There is fairly extensive documentation on the Demo Plugins Wiki on GitHub. The DLLs come from NuGet which is integrated into Visual Studio. It should automatically download them when you build through VS.

Comments

I'm not sure how you're attempting to build the plug-in, but make sure you loaded the ParatextDemoPlugins.sln into VS and not the individual plugin files.

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Thanks for your help. I will give that a try!

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Thanks for your help! I've built a custom plugin DLL. Where exactly should I place the plugin file for Paratext 9 to detect it? It's not appearing in the menu with the places I've tried.

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See this information about what you need to do. Basically, you need to rename the DLL file and put it a folder under the plugins directory.