Building a merged application:

To build a merged double-clickable application, you need to supply a Developer license and a Runtime volume license in the Licences tab of the Build Application window of 4D Standalone 2004. Since each merged application will contain its own licensing information (provided by 4D when including the Runtime license during the Build Application process), the application will not require the end user to have a license on their machine. So distribution of merged applications does not require end user registration/licensing through 4D. The concept is the same for plug-ins included in merged applications, except that plug-in Runtime Licenses are enabled or disabled through the Plug-ins tab in the Build Application window. Remember that a merged application can only be run on the file system architecture it was built on (Mac OS X or Windows). So if you want to build for Mac and Windows, you have to have a Developer license for each operating system, and then build each application on the corresponding operating system. The Runtime volume license can be used on either operating system.

The benefits of building merged applications are that it doesn't require end-user registration through 4D, and the application does not require downloading of any 4D software to run. Keep in mind the merged application can still benefit from 4D Tools, since 4D Tools can open compiled .4DC files (and on Mac OSX, 4D Tools can open merged application bundles).