Home
Internet Basic Development Platform

Introduction

The Internet Basic Development Platform is a software toolkit for programmers who write applications for Comet systems. The toolkit includes a customized version of the Ultra Edit text editor. This program offers many outstanding features, such as:

Download and installation instructions

  1. Make sure you are running the appropriate version of Comet:

  2. Download Ultra Edit from www.ultraedit.com. Get the file named uedit32.zip.

  3. Using WinZip, unzip the uedit32.zip file.

    This zip file contains two self-installing programs:

  4. Run Uedit32i.exe and install Ultra Edit.

  5. Optionally, run Dictam.exe and install the dictionary for Ultra Edit's spelling checker.

  6. Download the Internet Basic Development Platform from Signature's web site.

    The self-installing program contains Signature's add-in features to Ultra Edit, including a custom toolbar, the syntax coloring file, the Internet Basic help file, the Comet Project Manager, and programs that provide the interface between Ultra Edit and Comet.

  7. Run the IBINSTALL.EXE program to install the Internet Basic Development Platform.

    Note: If you ever re-install Ultra Edit, run IBINSTALL.EXE again to re-install the add-in features. Make sure to run IBINSTALL.EXE after installing Ultra Edit.

  8. You have 30 days to evaluate Ultra Edit and the Internet Basic Development Platform. To continue using these features after the evaluation period, you must enter an authorization code.

    Click on the "Enter Authorization code" button in Ultra Edit, as shown on the following screen.

    Purchase the product and enter the User Name and Authorization code you received and then click on the "OK" button, as shown on the following screen.

Creating and compiling Internet Basic source programs

When you create an Internet Basic source program using Ultra Edit, you are creating a text file. If you save a file using the recommended naming convention, your source program will inherit the syntax coloring for Internet Basic. That naming convention is as follows:

Here are some sample source program names:

SAMPLE1.IBS
SAMPLE2.IBS
SAMPLE3.IBS
SAMPLE4.IBS

The Internet Basic compiler recognizes a compiler command in the source program itself. This command is written as a comment and placed on the first line of the source program. Here are two examples: 

! //IB// Src(SAMPLE1.IBS,DSK) Obj(SAMPLE1,MSC)

! //IB// WSrc(G:\Comet\DSK\ClearLst.Ibs) WObj(G:\Comet\DSK\ClearLst)

The first example shows the file and directory names in Comet format, while the second example shows the file names in Windows format.

Note: If you omit the command line from your program, the Internet Basic Development Platform creates an object program using the same name as the source program without the extension. For example, if your source program is named SAMPLE1.IBS, your object program will be named SAMPLE1. (Technically, the object program is named SAMPLE1.OBJ, but you do not specify the OBJ extension when writing the command line in your source program.)

For more information about the command line, including information on additional options, see the Internet Basic documentation.

Prior to compiling your program, make sure that Comet us running. If it isn't, click on the "Start Comet" icon on the toolbar, as shown here:

Note: The "Start Comet" icon starts the previous version of Comet, if any, that was running on your system. If your system has multiple versions of Comet (including CometAnywhere), and if you want to start a specific version of Comet, do so before running Ultra Edit.

When you are ready to compile your program, click on the "Compile" icon on the toolbar, as shown here:

There are two other ways to start the compiler. One is a menu option (the "Compile" item on the "Advanced" menu), as shown below. The other is a keyboard shortcut -- the F7 key.

Troubleshooting

Here are a couple of steps that can help you fix some common start-up problems:

Getting help

The Internet Basic Development Platform provides several ways to access the Internet Basic documentation. First, you can choose the "Internet Basic Help" item from the "Help" menu, as shown here:

Second, you can highlight a keyword in your program and press the F1 key (or use the "Internet Basic Help" menu item shown above). This method provides context-sensitive help for all of the keywords in the Internet Basic language.

Note: The documentation included with the Internet Basic Development Platform is a compiled version of the documentation files found at the Internet Basic web site. When updates occur, Signature Systems will update the web site and will also provide an updated version of the compiled help file.

Third, you can use the Tag List feature. To activate this feature, press Ctrl + F8 and click on the tag shown on the right part of the screen. UltraEdit will insert the associated text into your source code, providing you with a template for the specified statement/command. There are four catagories of Internet Basic tags:

  1. Statements
  2. Mnemonics
  3. Compiler commands
  4. System variables

Comet Project Manager

The Comet Project Manager helps you manage Internet Basic programming projects. This program lets you create a list of files for two purposes:

The list of files is referred to as a project.

Here is a project that contains five source programs and one include file.

The Build column specifies whether the files are to be batch compiled (yes for the source programs, no for the include file). The Sync column specifies whether the files are to be synchronized between a CometAnywhere client system and a Comet host system.

To start the Comet Project Manager, click on the "Edit Project" icon on the Ultra Edit toolbar.

For more information about the Comet Project Manager, see the on-line help.

There are two additional toolbar icons. One is the "Compile Project" icon, which performs a batch compile of files in a project. The other is the "Synchronize" icon, which synchronizes files between a CometAnywhere client system and a Comet host system. Both of these are described in the on-line help for the Comet Project Manager.