Can I take standalone tool and make it a plug-in?

Suppose there was a standalone tool such as mobile phone emulator, can I customize it to be a plug-in in Eclipse? Will this book help me modify existing plug-ins? For example: When I launch IE and any cookies are maintain in session, so if I open more IE windows in Eclipse functions like I am creating children windows instead of parent. I want to change the plug-in.

Originally posted by Jean Miles:
Suppose there was a standalone tool such as mobile phone emulator, can I customize it to be a plug-in in Eclipse?

Sure you can. It's all about how much work it is to do just that. There's nothing stopping you from launching the same Java (or native) application upon actions in the Eclipse framework. Also, there's nothing stopping you from merging the standalone application's GUI into the Eclipse UI framework. Except the raw amount of labour.

The common practice is to make a plug-in out of the base application and a separate plug-in for the Eclipse user interface. See the plug-ins org.junit and org.eclipse.jdt.junit for example. Org.junit is just the standard JUnit release wrapped in a plug-in with no extension points. Org.eclipse.jdt.junit refers to org.junit and provides all the user interface functionality.
Kent