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Documentation

Below documentation is part of the BeeBase dictribution and is also available in PDF.

3. Getting Started

This chapter describes what the hardware and software requirements are to run BeeBase on your computer, the procedure for installing and updating BeeBase, and how to start and quit BeeBase.

3.1 Installing BeeBase on Windows

BeeBase for Windows runs on Intel compatible computers that use the Windows 10 or later operating system in 64 bit.

The BeeBase installer is distributed as a Windows executable, e.g. `BeeBase-1.0-setup-x64.exe' which you can download from the BeeBase home page https://beebase.sourceforge.io. When running the installer, you will be asked several options about where to install BeeBase and which configuration to use. In case you have a previous BeeBase version installed on your computer, the installation procedure allows to update it to the new version.

After a successful installation your Windows `Start' menu should contain a new entry for launching BeeBase. You can now remove the BeeBase installer as it is no longer needed.

3.2 Installing BeeBase on Mac OS

BeeBase for Mac OS supports macOS Big Sur (version 11) and later versions of the Mac OS operating system. The software is distributed as a universal binary that contains 64bit binaries for both Intel and Arm CPUs.

A disk image of BeeBase, e.g. `BeeBase-1.0.dmg' can be downloaded from the BeeBase home page https://beebase.sourceforge.io. After downloading and opening the image, drag and drop `BeeBase.app' into your computer's `Applications' folder.

3.3 Installing BeeBase on Linux

You can install and run BeeBase on an Intel-compatible computer running the Linux operating system.

BeeBase for Linux is distributed both, as a Debian package (e.g. `beebase_1.0_arm64.deb' for Ubuntu or Debian) and as an RPM archive (e.g. `BeeBase-1.0-fc34.aarch64.rpm' for Fedora).

All versions can be downloaded from the BeeBase home page https://beebase.sourceforge.io.

Usually BeeBase installs or updates itself automatically after downloading it on your computer. In case the installation process does not start automatically, the following commands executed as super user (root) in a command shell install or update BeeBase on a Debian-based Linux computer:

dpkg --install beebase.deb
apt-mark hold beebase.deb

where beebase.deb is the downloaded BeeBase Debian package.

On a Redhat-based system (RPM), the commands are:

rpm -Uvh BeeBase.rpm

where BeeBase.rpm is the downloaded RPM archive.

After a successful installation you should see a new menu item in the `Applications - Office' menu tree of your Limux desktop.

3.4 Installing BeeBase on Amiga

BeeBase for Amiga runs on Amiga OS version 3.0 or higher and requires an 68020 processor or better. Furthermore, MUI version 3.8 or higher must be present on your system. A minimum of 4MB RAM and 10MB of free hard disk space are needed. The m68k binary of BeeBase for Amiga has been reported to run stable on UAE, MorphOS and Amiga OS4. PowerPC binaries for MorphOS and Amiga OS4 as well as i386 and x86_64 versions for AROS are also available as part of the distributed archive.

BeeBase is distributed as an lha archive, e.g. `BeeBase-1.0.lha' and can be downloaded from the BeeBase home page https://beebase.sourceforge.io. In order to install BeeBase on your computer unpack this archive to a temporary directory. Do not unpack it to the target directory!

Double click the BeeBase installer script `Install-BeeBase' and follow its instructions. The script asks for a directory where the software should be copied to. Do not enter the directory where you have unpacked the BeeBase archive to. The script is also capable of updating an existing BeeBase installation by entering the directory where you previously installed BeeBase.

After successful installation you will find a (new) drawer on your system containing the BeeBase program along with all necessary files and some sample projects. In addition an assign `BeeBase:' referring to this drawer has been added to your system file `S:User-Startup'. It is safe to remove the lha archive and the temporary files as they are no longer needed.

3.5 Updating from a Previous Version

When installing BeeBase, you can upgrade from a previous version of BeeBase or reinstall it as described above. During the new installation, all necessary files are replaced by new ones. This includes the sample projects in the `Demos' directory. It is therefore not recommended to place your own projects into this directory nor to use any of the sample projects for managing your own data as they are overwritten when reinstalling or upgrading BeeBase.

The recommended way to manage your own projects is to place them into a separate directory independent of the BeeBase installation directory.

If your system contains a version of MUIbase, it is recommended to remove it, in order to have file associations correctly assigned to BeeBase.

3.6 Starting BeeBase

BeeBase can be started either from your graphical environment or from a command shell. On Windows you find BeeBase under the `Start' menu. On Mac OS, you launch BeeBase using `Finder' from the `Applications' directory. If you are running Gnome or KDE on Linux, you can start BeeBase by choosing the corresponding item from the `Applications - Office' menu. On the Workbench (Amiga) you double click the BeeBase icon or the icon of a BeeBase project which is then automatically loaded after starting BeeBase (you can also select several BeeBase projects by shift clicking them and double clicking the last one).

When starting BeeBase from a command shell on Windows, Linux or Amiga you can include command line arguments and optional projects to load. There are two basic ways to start BeeBase from a command shell:

BeeBase [project1 ...]
BeeBase -n

The first form starts BeeBase and loads the optional projects specified by their filenames project1 .... The second form starts BeeBase without graphical user interface. This can be useful for running BeeBase as a server in the background and accessing it through its external interface (e.g. ARexx on Amiga, see ARexx interface).

3.7 Quitting BeeBase

To quit BeeBase select menu item `Project - Quit' or close all opened projects.

3.8 Filename Conventions on Windows, Mac OS and Linux

BeeBase for Windows, Mac OS and Linux has a few special conventions for filenames that are usually not found in other software on those systems.

When BeeBase is starting, an environment variable `BeeBase' is set referring to the installation directory of BeeBase. On Windows this is the directory specified during the software installation. On Mac OS, it is directory `/Applications/BeeBase.app/Contents/Resources/share/BeeBase'. On Linux, it is directory `/usr/share/BeeBase'.

When interpreting filenames (either entered by the user or the filenames present in this documentation) a filename is examined for the occurrence of environment variables. If a filename contains a dollar sign `$' then the characters following it until the first non-alpha-numeric character are interpreted as an environment variable and, if the environment variable is set, the part of the filename is replaced by the contents of the environment variable (otherwise the part of the filename is left unchanged including the `$' sign). You can use parentheses around the environment variable if it contains non-alpha-numeric characters. For example `$HOME/data' expands to the path where `$HOME' has been replaced with the path name of your home directory.

Furthermore, Amiga-style `assign names' are handled in the following way. If a filename contains a colon `:' then everything before the colon is treated like an environment variable (called `assign name') and is replaced by its contents if the environment variable is set. `Assign names' should be at least 2 characters in length, in order to distinguish them from drive letters on Windows.

These conventions allow, for example, to refer to the movie sample database inside the BeeBase installation directory as `BeeBase:demos/Movie.bbs'.

Another example is when you set an environment variable, say `EXTERNAL_DATA', referring to the directory where you store external data like images, etc. of one of your projects. You can then access data inside this directory through `EXTERNAL_DATA:some-file' and store such filenames in the database project.

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