A template is a blueprint folder structure containing the files and directories representing one type of plugin that can be created, e.g. tag plugin, command plugin, etc.
While there usually is a predetermined layout of directories and subdirectories for each plugin type (see C4D docs), the actual contents of any file is of course up to the user.
When the template is read and a new plugin created, the wizard performs replacements of magic tokens and rules in the files and folder names of the template folder structure, as well as the contents of any file.
Magic tokens are specific text snippets enclosed by the starting character sequence %! and the ending character sequence !%.
The text snippets that can be used inbetween are called datum points and are predetermined. Datum points can also have alternative forms into which they will be transformed.
For example one datum point might be the plugin name as entered by the user and one transformation might be an uppercase transformation, called the UppercaseID form. A complete magic token of the previous example would be PluginName, additionally with the alternative form: PluginNameAsUppercaseID.
Note the adverb As that separates the datum point from the alternative form.
Rules on the other hand are read from a Python file called, rules.py that can reside in the data directory or in each template directory. This file won’t be copied but a Python dictionary type variable named RULES will be read from it and the wizard will then perform searches looking for any text strings named the same as the keys of the RULES dict and will then perform replacements with the corresponding values.
So, if you have a file called %!PluginNameAsUppercaseID!%.pyp in one of your templates and you enter Super Awesome Plugin as the plugin name in the wizard, the file will be renamed to SUPERAWESOMEPLUGIN.pyp
Likewise, suppose your rules.py file contains the following RULES dict:
import time
RULES = {
'${YEAR}': time.strftime("%Y"),
'COMPANY': 'My Company'
}
The wizard will now replace any occurrences of ${YEAR} with the current year as returned by time.strftime and any occurrence of COMPANY with 'My Company'. Again, this includes files and directory names as well as file contents.
See also Tips.