Once you have written a new plugin, you must let RT3 know about it before it can be fully utilized; this is accomplished by adding information about the plugin to the Windows registry. Registering a plugin can be done manually or automated as part of the install process for your plugin. You can also choose to register a plugin for the current user only, or for all users on the computer. We assume you will be registering the plugin for all users, but if you wish to register a plugin for a single user only, simply replace HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE with HKEY_CURRENT_USER in the examples below.
Registering a UI Plugin is very similar to a regular plugin except that you add it to the Ui sub-folder of the plugin in the registry. Continuing with the Link16 example above, suppose that you have a custom UI with ProgID “Link16Library.Link16ProviderUi”:
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\AGI\RT3\11.0\Providers\Ui]
"Link16"="Link16Library.Link16ProviderUi"
Normally this step is done automatically by an installer, but if you are attempting to manually install a plugin on a machine, you need to register it with the Microsoft COM registry before it can be used.
Compiled components are contained in a dynamic link library, whose filename has an extension 'dll'. To register the component, create a command window (under the Start menu, hit "Run ...", type 'Command' and hit OK). Change your directory (using cd) to that of the file. At the command prompt, type 'regsvr32 YOUR_FILENAME'. For example:
regsvr32 AGI.Realtime.Examples.Providers.dll
Compiled components are contained in a dynamic link library, whose filename has an extension 'dll'. To register the component, create a command window (under the Start menu, hit "Run ...", type 'Command' and hit OK). Change your directory (using cd) to that of the file. At the command prompt, type 'regasm /codebase YOUR_FILENAME'. For example:
blockquote> regasm /codebase AGI.Realtime.Examples.Providers.dll blockquote>NOTE: Your system may not recognize the regasm command. In that case, you will need to specify the full filepath to RegAsm.exe. The file itself is found in a sub-folder of C:\WINDOWS\Microsoft.NET\Framework\. The actual folder depends on your version of the .NET Framework installed on your machine.
When using regsvr32 on a 64-bit machine, it is important to know whether the COM object is built using a 32- or 64-bit architecture. To register a 32 bit built COM object, you must use the 32 bit version of regsvr32. Normally this is found in C:\Windows\SysWOW64. By default, 64 bit machines use the 64 bit version of regsvr32, so you should use
C:\Windows\SysWOW64\regsvr32.exe YOUR_FILENAME
Attempting to use an RT3 plugin without first adding it to the Windows registry will cause unexpected behavior. You should always ensure that a plugin has been successfully registered before attempting to use it.
STK Programming Interface 11.0.1