Providing help
Here are some suggested ideas about “providing help”.
Help text on the ;info line should be reasonably limited; generally if it exceeds five lines, it may be too verbose.
If the plug-in is to be added to those distributed in Audacity releases, any ;info line text which explains the plug-in should be minimal, to accord with practice in built-in plug-ins.
More extensive help can be provided in a text file to be included with the plug-in file, or in “Help Screens” which can be selected via a control in the plug-in. Help Screens (where necessary) should be used if a plug-in is to be distributed inside Audacity. Text for each help screen should have a forced newline (n or hit ENTER) at 50 characters. A new paragraph should be created by nn or ENTER twice. The maximum number of lines per screen is 25 lines, including empty lines. These conventions keep formatting as neat as possible at both 800 x 600 and very high resolutions where Nyquist message boxes may extend to 260 characters wide (See https://forum.audacityteam.org/t/searching-for-an-effect/192/1).
Plug-ins for distribution inside Audacity will be documented in the Manual. The extent of this documentation depends on the extent of help provided in the Help Screens. The Manual is a reference rather than a “how-to”, so if short descriptions of controls are the only help needed, consider putting this documentation in the Manual and not including Help Screens. If the plug-in needs extensive examples of how to use the plug-in to achieve the desired result, that would require Help Screens.
Gale