Plugin Wizard

Description

The plugin wizard is designed to quickly generate the basic skeleton of a Plugin to aid authorship. The wizard is able to generate the basic structure for Regression and Analysis plugins.

Usage

The wizard can be started by selecting New->Plugin... from the File Menu.

The wizard is navigated using the buttons at the bottom of the dialog.

Plugin Type

The wizard supports two types of plugins, regressions and analyses. The user can select either on the step below:

Variable Selection

This step allows the specification of variable selection columns to appear in the plugin window when it is executed. Each column specification also allows two options. The first, Exclusive?, requires that any variable selected for this column may only be selected for the specified column. The second, Select Many?, specifies whether the column should allow the selection of multiple variables.

Option Specification

This step is used to add options to a plugin. The Label should be specified as human-readable, and can be referenced later in the plugin by its name. The drop-down next to the name field allows the user to choose the type of option.

The option type can be any of the following:

Type	Description
Integer	A single integer
Floating Point	A single floating point value
String	Plain text
Variable Selection	A drop-down listing all variables in the worksheet, allowing the selection of one
Constant Selection	A drop-down listing all constants in the worksheet, allowing the selection of one
Check Box	A simple check box to implement a boolean condition

Finalize

The final step is used to specify the name of the plugin.

The visible name will appear in the appropriate menu within Draco. The class name should be a name for the plugin object in Ruby that consists of only letters and numbers, but no spaces or symbols (with the exception of "_"). The final optional text field allows the specification of the module to contain the plugin. The module name, while not strictly necessary, can be used to group similar plugins or related code together.

Once complete, clicking the Finish button will cause Draco to generate the plugin code. When the code is generated, a Close button will appear. If no errors were encountered, clicking the Close button will open an editor window containing the new plugin code.