Templates are pre-written scripts in a particular scripting language. They can be distributed as any other plugin, and automatically discovered by the Script Editor. Templates thus present an excellent way to demonstrate a particular operation to a wide audience of users.
Available templates are sorted by language under the Templates menu of the Script Editor. The contents of a template will be loaded into the editor window when selected. The script can then be inspected, executed and modified as normal.
Adding a new template
The Script Editor will automatically search the script_templates directory and register any discovered scripts as templates. For example, a Mavenized project could add a sample script in src/main/resources/script_templates and it would be packaged into the appropriate location of the resultant .jar.
For examples of how the existing templates are structured and distributed, take a look at the imagej-legacy project (which maintains the script templates that were previously shipped with Fiji’s script editor) as well as the imagej-scripting project.
Template best practices
Above all else, templates should be well documented. Templates are intended to explain specific functionality in a given language, to users who may have limited experience with the language or programming/scripting in general.
Ideally, a template will be focused on an a single objective (e.g. opening an image, calculating a threshold, operating on a directory, etc…).
It is especially helpful to document how the template can be adapted to meet the user’s needs.
