Having the best script in the world is pretty much useless if you can't share it with other people. Because scripts were designed to be rapidly developed, they were also designed to be rapidly shared. For that reason, Messenger Plus! Live comes with its own script installation mechanism called Script Pack.

A Script Pack is a single file, with a ".plsc" extension, containing all the files and sub directories of your script. Creating such a file is ridiculously easy for simple reason: Script Packs are just and only plain zip files with a different extension. This means that you only need to zip all the files in your script directory (with your favorite zip tool, like Winzip) and replace the ".zip" extension with ".plsc". Only one thing is required to make your zip file a valid Script Pack: a ScriptInfo.xml file.

ScriptInfo.xml is a file placed in the script's directory (along with ".js" files). It is read when the script is loaded or imported and contains several information related to the script such as its name, its description, the menus it displays in Messenger, etc... the file does not need to be created for scripts to run locally, however, its presence is mandatory if the script has to be exported into a Script Pack. A full description of the content of the file can be found in the ScriptInfo Schema Reference, here is however an example of a simple ScriptInfo file that you can use for your script:

<ScriptInfo>      
        <Information>
                <Name>My First Script</Name>
                <Description>This is my first script.</Description>
                <AboutUrl>http://www.msgpluslive.net</AboutUrl>
                <Version>1.00</Version>
        </Information>
</ScriptInfo>

Just copy paste what's above in a new text file, save it in your script's directory and rename it to "ScriptInfo.xml". The xml file can be saved in Unicode (UTF-16) if your language requires it. Now, select all the files in your script's directory, zip them and rename the zip file with a ".plsc" extension (example: rename "My First Script.zip" to "My First Script.plsc"). Your Script Pack is ready to go! to test it, just sign in Messenger and double click on the plsc file you've just created, if you followed the steps above correctly, you will get the "Import Script" window of Messenger Plus! Live. Once the script is imported, it is automatically activated. If a script with the same name already exists in the user's directory, its files are transparently replaced with the new ones (useful for upgrades).

In the XML code specified above, only <Name> is a required element. <Description>, <AboutUrl>, and <Version> can be removed if not needed. To ensure forward compatibility, specify the version of the script in the <Version> element (Messenger Plus! Live 4.20 and later) and not in the <Name> element. This will prevent duplicated copies of the same script from being installed on a user's system (as the name of the script is used to create the corresponding script's directory). It is also highly recommended to specify an <UpdateId> and a <BuildNumber> so that Messenger Plus! can properly notify the users of your script when you release a new version in the public database.

If you look at the first picture in ScriptInfo Schema Documentation, you'll see that several other elements are also available aside from <Information>. Two of them can be used during import: <OleFiles> and <DotNetFiles>. These are to be used if your script replies on external COM/ActiveX or .NET objects created by yourself or not supposed to come in standard with Windows. Files listed in those two elements will be registered properly in the system when the script is imported. For example, if you created an ActiveX object in VisualBasic for your script called "ExtraFunctionsVB.dll" (loaded with JScript's ActiveXObject object), your ScriptInfo file would have to look like this:

<ScriptInfo>     
        <Information>
                <Name>My First Script</Name>
        </Information>

        <OleFiles>      
          <FileName>ExtraFunctionsVB.dll</FileName>
        </OleFiles>
</ScriptInfo>

If you still have doubts about how to do something in particular in your ScriptInfo.xml file, you can download existing Script Pack files, change their extension to ".zip" and take a look at how the developer of the script created his own ScriptInfo file. Also, remember to always use a good XML editor to create your XML files as a real XML editor can validate your syntax and insure that your elements conform to the specified schema file. This will save you long hours of searching for errors caused by a missing or invalid tag in your XML file.

Packaging your Script

See Also