Introduction

DropTool stacks (custom control stacks that are compatible with the DropTools Palette) are easy to create; the requirements for creating the DropTool is based on how your control operates and what (if any) optional features you want to take advantage of that the DropTools Palette has to offer.

At its simplest, you can make a DropTool stack that consists of one card and one group object that contains your custom control, with the group and stack named in a specific way. At the other end of the spectrum, a complex DropTool stack may have multiple objects on the card, multiple substacks, several custom properties set, and specialized handlers set up to customize the installation process.

(If you create your own DropTool stacks,

please let us know about

it so we can add it to the DropTools web site! For more information about distributing and/or selling your DropTool stacks, see the Distributing Your DropTool page.)

Getting Started

If you're the kind of person who just wants to "dive right in", you should take a look at these pages after you finish reading this one:

• The Feature Overview page which will give you a general idea of what the DropTools Palette can do
• The Quick Reference page to get an idea of the tasks you'll need to perform
• The DropTool Template page to give you some info on the supplied template stack you can use to make your own DropTool
• The Using Images? page to make you aware of how you may need to adjust your scripts to work with images

Otherwise, taking a top-to-bottom approach through the Contents is probably best, and will show you examples of different kinds of DropTools you can create.

FYI

Naming Your DropTool

The DropTools Palette associates objects/stacks/etc. to each other based on the itself, so it's very important that you keep this consistent while naming various objects. You'll see how this works in the three example pages on creating a prescripted, behavior-based, or library-based DropTool, and in the Quick Reference page, but for now just be aware that the DropTool name is important.

What is the <dropToolType>?

The is a placeholder used in the docs to generically refer to the "type" of DropTool. At the moment, the "type" of a DropTool is the same as the internal name of the DropTool stack, so the DropTool stack named "stsImageWell" has a type of "stsImageWell". This may seem redundant, but having a separate "type" actually makes it easier to understand and use the documentation.

Setting Your DropTool Version

A future version of the DropTools Palette will provide support for doing version management of DropTool stacks. To do that, it is important that you set the version number of your DropTool properly. Since the DropTools Palette works with the RunRev Interoperability Project specifications, you need to set the of your DropTool stack. (This is already set up for you in the DropTool Template stack, by the way.)