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Many professional software packages offer plugin APIs to developers, in order to increase the utility of the base product. Examples of these include:

• Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator
• Digidesign Pro Tools
• Eclipse

Perhaps the first applications to include a plug-in function were HyperCard and QuarkXPress on the Macintosh, both released in 1987. These days, plug-ins are typically implemented as shared libraries which need to be installed in a standard place where the application will find them. HyperCard supported a similar facility, but it was more common for the plug-in code to be included in the HyperCard documents (called stacks) themselves. This way, the HyperCard stack became a self-contained application in its own right, that could be distributed as a single entity that could be run by the user without the need for additional installation steps.

Some small software vendors produce no stand-aloneStand-alone is a confusing and misleading term, used to refer to various categories of computer programs, but rarely in a consistent fashion. The term usually tries to draw some distinction between programs that are run directly by the user by giving some software at all, but plugins for a certain product. In order to make such a position more viable as a business, open APIs are provided to allow application vendors to change their product or go out of business without destroying the cottage industries that grow up around them. Probably the example of an industry built around such APIs is the Adobe Photoshop plug-in API, which has also been adopted to some extent by competing applications. Other examples of such APIs include Audio UnitsAudio' Units is a plug-in API developed by Apple Computer to add functionality to audio creation and recording software. The API is openly documented and its use encouraged by Apple, but the API must be implemented by developers for users to take advantag and VSTVST VST is an acronym for Virtual Studio Technology and refers either directly to some versions of the Steinberg Cubase program or VST plug-ins''. VST plug-ins VST plug-ins are software modules that can take the form of instruments or effects. Competing t.

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