The NVDA Add-on API changes over time, such as removals, deprecations and new features.

Important changes to the API are announced on the [NVDA API mailing list https://groups.google.com/a/nvaccess.org/g/nvda-api/about].

Any changes to the API policy outlined in this section will be conveyed via these two channels.

API breaking releases happen at most once per year, these are ``.1`` releases, e.g. ``2022.1``.

++ C++ ++

Some of NVDA is written in C++, EG nvdaHelper.

For an overview of nvdaHelper, including how to configure Visual Studio to enable intellisense see the

+ Translation +

In order to support multiple languages/locales, NVDA must be translated and data specific to the locale must be provided.

This section only includes information on custom NVDA file formats required for translation.

Other items need to be translated, such as the NVDA user interface and documentation, but these use standard file formats.

++ Character Descriptions ++

Sometimes, it can be very difficult or even impossible to distinguish one character from another.

Each language directory can also contain gettext information, which is the system used to translate the rest of NVDA's user interface and reported messages.

As with the rest of NVDA, an nvda.mo compiled gettext database file should be placed in the LC_MESSAGES directory within this directory.

To allow plugins in your add-on to access gettext message information via calls to _(), you must initialize translations at the top of each Python module by calling addonHandler.initTranslation().

++ Add-on Documentation ++[AddonDoc]

Documentation for an add-on should be placed in a doc directory in the archive.