Natural Studio offers a set of functions, tools and utilities. You may need further functions or a tool that does not yet exist in Natural Studio, or find yourself repeatedly doing the same task. With Natural Studio plug-ins, you can create your own extensions of Natural Studio functionality. A variety of Natural Studio components has been developed using this technique, for example the plug-ins XRef Evaluation and Object Description.
A Natural Studio plug-in is an ActiveX component that provides specific interfaces. Using these interfaces, Natural Studio interacts with the plug-in. Vice versa, Natural Studio provides specific interfaces through which a plug-in can interact with Natural Studio. These interfaces are presented in the form of an object model that allows access to most areas of Natural Studio.
Because Natural Studio plug-ins are ActiveX components, you can develop plug-ins in any language that allows you to create ActiveX components. If you implement your plug-in in Natural, however, you can integrate it most closely into Natural Studio. In Natural, you implement a plug-in as a Natural class.
One type of plug-in is a wizard. A wizard is a step-by-step instructive program that leads users through a specific procedure. An example of this plug-in type is the Application Wizard. Another type of plug-in is an editor. An editor allows creating and modifying development objects in an MDI document window. An example of this plug-in type is Object Description.
