WIP.IDE.md

The IDE section — finishing it

The IDE section (docs/IDE/, /tB/IDE) is being rewritten so that every page is fit for the book. The goal is that docs/_book.yml holds no IDE entry under left_out:. This file covers the structure, the conventions, where each fact comes from, and how a chapter is written. Owner decisions, 2026-10-11:

• task chapters plus a reference part;
• permalinks flattened, with redirects;
• the how-to material in Features/Compiler-IDE moved here;
• docs/IDE/_Images/*.af deleted.

The section is not bound to the structure it had. The existing pages are raw material.

What "book-ready" means for a page

• No heading without text under it, no TODO, and no list of labels copied off a screenshot. Every menu item, button and option has at least a sentence saying what it does.
• Every claim about behaviour has been checked against BETA 1005 or newer: read from main.js, or tried in an IDE on a private desktop. A screenshot or an older page is not a source.
• The prose carries the information. Alt text describes the picture and holds no fact the prose lacks; a long alt text that lists labels is a sign the prose is missing.
• The conventions below are followed, and the page is in the IDE part of _book.yml.

Structure

Part A, Working in the IDE. Each chapter is one page, or a short landing page with a few children. Second person ("you") is allowed here, as in tutorials.

#	Chapter	Permalink	Takes in
1	A tour of the IDE (landing page)	/tB/IDE	index.md
2	Starting a project	/tB/IDE/Starting	New Project, Splash Screen, FAQ's first-launch and VBP-import parts
3	Projects and files	/tB/IDE/Projects	Project Explorer (file and object views, Add, context menu; no resource editors: images preview, the rest open as text), references and packages (links to Features/Packages), Export Project (from Menu/File)
3a	Project Settings (reference)	/tB/IDE/Project-Settings	Project Settings.md, kept whole; its anchors stay, as 19 links use them
4	Writing code	/tB/IDE/Code + children	Editor, Find/Replace, Outline, Open Editors, History, Diagnostics, Features/Compiler-IDE/CodeLens
5	Designing forms and reports	/tB/IDE/Forms, /tB/IDE/Reports	tbForm, Toolbox, Properties, the Format menu's operations, tbReport
6	Running and debugging	/tB/IDE/Debugging + children	Menu/Debug's run-time error walkthrough and Debugger Options, Menu/Run, Debug Console, Variables, Watches, Call Stack, Memory, Features/Compiler-IDE/Debugging
7	Building	/tB/IDE/Building	Toolbar's Build configuration, Menu/File's Build and Clean, Package Publishing, links to LLVM and Project-Types
8	Customising the IDE	/tB/IDE/Customising/ + children (written)	IDE Options (all of them), themes and custom .theme files, panel layouts, keyboard shortcuts, language (from Menu/Window and Menu/Tools)
9	Add-ins	/tB/IDE/AddIns/	AddIns/* as they are, Community given content
10	When something goes wrong	/tB/IDE/Troubleshooting	Status Bar's service states, Restart the compiler, TRACE mode, error reporting

Part B, Reference. Written impersonally. One page per menu, plus the Toolbar, the Status Bar and the keyboard shortcuts, under /tB/IDE/Reference/…. Each entry gives the item, its shortcut, one or two sentences, and a link to the chapter that explains it.

• The keymap is shown as a table, not the JSON dump Menu/Window.md holds now. The table can be generated from main.js if keeping it by hand proves error-prone. Decide that when the page is written.
• Webpage and the other panes that are not in a chapter get a reference entry.

Moving pages. When a page moves, its old permalink goes into redirect_from:, and every inbound link is changed to the new canonical URL. The 61 inbound links are in Features/, Reference/, Tutorials/, LLVM/, Miscellaneous/FAQs.md, Documentation/ and docs/index.md. An anchor another page links to keeps its heading text. redirect_from cannot rescue an anchor, so check these:

• Project-Settings#…;
• Window#language, from FAQs.md.

Where a merged page's pictures live does not change: shoot_docs.mjs writes them by path (out), so leave the files in docs/IDE/Images/ and Menu/Images/ and change only the links.

Features/Compiler-IDE keeps a short "what's new compared to VB6" page that links into the chapters. The how-to sections of IDE-Features.md, Debugging.md and CodeLens.md move here, and those pages get redirect_from only if they are removed outright.

A landing page with children has a trailing slash (/tB/IDE/Customising/, as /tB/IDE/AddIns/). Without the slash, the link check resolves Customising#anchor to the child folder.

Language names in a script the font subsets lack (Cyrillic, Devanagari, Malayalam, CJK) are written in English only. The subsets cover Latin and Greek; see scripts/build_fonts.py.

Nav order. The chapters take nav_order 1--10 in the order of the table above. IDE Reference has 99. The nav sorts numbered pages before unnumbered ones, so until a pane page is absorbed it sorts after the Reference.

The book. _book.yml's IDE part becomes Part A's chapters followed by Part B. A page leaves left_out: when it is finished, not before.

Conventions

These apply across docs/IDE/. The first three also apply to any page that names the IDE's controls or keys, and docs/Documentation/Authoring.md (Formatting conventions) states them for contributors.

• UI names in bold, as the IDE spells them: Project Explorer, Break On All Errors.
• Menu paths in bold with an arrow: File → Export Project.
• Keys: <kbd>Ctrl</kbd>+<kbd>Shift</kbd>+<kbd>F</kbd>, with key names in mixed case and no spaces around the +. Every key is written by name: <kbd>Enter</kbd>, <kbd>F5</kbd>, <kbd>Break</kbd>, and arrows as <kbd>Up</kbd>, <kbd>Down</kbd>, <kbd>Left</kbd> and <kbd>Right</kbd>. Glyphs are avoided, because the font subsets need not hold them. The 59 existing <kbd>CTRL</kbd> are converted in one mechanical pass.
• Never re-list a picture's labels (owner). The screenshots are SVGs whose text is accessible, so a bare list of a menu's or dialog's items (label and keys, nothing else) only repeats the picture. A reference entry says what the item does. An item with nothing to say beyond its label is left to the picture.
• Headings in sentence case, with no icon and no shortcut inside them.
• The section names no build, except in a defect callout (owner's standing rule). Lines such as "Components list coming soon" go, unless the IDE itself shows that text and the page says so.
• Defects the twinBASIC developers already know of (owner) are not queued, but a page that describes the feature still carries the callout rule 6 calls for:
  • Rename Symbol (F2) renames nothing;
  • accepting a function from the completion list by typing ( doubles the parenthesis (Area(()).
• Callouts follow WIP.md rule 6. A twinBASIC defect found while writing goes into BUGS-TO-REPORT.md with a reproducer, never into a page alone.

Where the facts come from

• <install>\ide\main.js (one line, about 1.3 MB). Search it with a Node script and bounded regexes, never with grep, which takes minutes on one line. Useful landmarks, by name, since offsets move between builds:
  • ideCommands: every command id, such as tbEditor_ClipboardPasteAsComment, and its default keys;
  • ideOptionsSchema: the IDE Options, one flat list of about 30 options;
  • rootMenu…offsetHeight blocks: the menus;
  • runningProcessesContainer: the running programs, shown as PROCESS boxes in the status bar (not in the Run menu);
  • createDropDowns: the editor's three combo boxes;
  • showDesignerContextMenu: the form designer's context menu;
  • tbFormDesigner_MenuEditor*: the menu editor;
  • tbProblems_*: Diagnostics;
  • reloadThemesFromDisk: .theme files;
  • statusErrorsDiv and statusMemUsageDiv: the status bar.
• The running IDE, for behaviour the code does not show plainly. Use Lane from scripts/lib/tb-lane.mjs on a private desktop, as shoot_docs.mjs setups do. Never use the owner's IDE or the real APPDATA.
• shoot_docs.mjs and WIP.Screenshots.md hold the states the screenshots already set up, which are often the quickest way to reach a dialog. A new picture is a new shot there, taken in both themes; never make a picture by hand.
• The kit .claude/tooling-review-scratch/beta995-probes/ide-driving-survey.md (gitignored) maps the debugger, Settings and Export internals.

Writing a chapter

1. Fact sheet. A Sonnet agent reads main.js and the existing pages and writes .claude/tooling-review-scratch/ide-docs/<chapter>-facts.md. Each item in it has its source, a command id or a regex, and is marked read or needs trying.
2. Trying. The needs trying items are tried in a lane IDE. Use an Opus agent, one at a time, recording the registry hashes before and after as for any harness run.
3. Pictures. New shoot_docs shots for what the chapter shows and no picture shows yet. Use an Opus agent, then --svg.
4. Writing. A Sonnet agent writes the pages from the fact sheet only, nothing from memory.
5. Review. Read the diff against the fact sheet, then run build.bat && check.bat. Then move the pages into the book part, run book.bat, and check the pages there.

Order, by what readers need most:

1. Customising (IDE Options)
2. Writing code
3. Running and debugging
4. Forms and reports
5. Projects and files
6. Building
7. Starting a project
8. Troubleshooting
9. Reference
10. The tour

The restructure comes first, in its own commit, before any chapter is written. It moves only the pages whose place in the new structure is settled:

• Project Settings;
• the menus, the Toolbar and the Status Bar, into Part B.

It also sets up the nav and the book parts.

A page that a chapter will absorb keeps its old URL until that chapter is written. The chapter then takes the old URL into its redirect_from:. That way nothing moves twice.

What the IDE has that no page covers yet

From the survey of BETA 1005. Each chapter's fact sheet confirms the items in its own chapter.

• IDE Options: all of them except Tab Size and the LLVM options. Examples are Intellisense mode, the Handles/Implements syntax, Show Hidden Members, advanced hover, sticky scrolling, Restore Editors State, the fonts, and the real OS title bar.
• Code editor:
  • the component, scope and procedure combo boxes, which also insert event handlers;
  • Rename Symbol, Go To Definition and Last Position;
  • bookmarks;
  • the right-click menu and the tab context menu;
  • Paste As Comment;
  • Monaco's command palette and multi-cursor commands;
  • automatic backups.
• Finding: Find In Project, the Quick Find widget, Go To Line/Column.
• Form designer: the menu editor, control arrays, locking, tab-index overlay, grid and zoom, "Launch the form in isolation", Select Parent, the in-place toolbar, the context menu, and the Toolbox's search, names toggle and "more components".
• Properties: search, the system-colour picker, ActiveX property pages.
• Report designer: everything beyond the list of bands and tools.
• Running:
  • the status bar's PROCESS boxes for running programs (Terminate, Bring To Front);
  • Run Or Preview (F6);
  • setting a breakpoint in the gutter, and whether breakpoints persist;
  • Step Out (on the toolbar, not on the Debug menu).
• Diagnostics: the four filter toggles and the context menu.
• Debug Console: the copy commands in its context menu.
• Project Explorer: the file context menu (Copy Path, View As JSON, View As Markdown Preview, Export…), the object view, search, and the empty headings for each Add item.
• Packages: the Available Packages tab, Import from file, the link and overwrite prompts, and the "package needed" prompts for WinNativeForms and CustomControls.
• Status bar: the memory figure, Ln/Col, LLVM progress and the Personal edition badge. The error, warning, hint and info counters are in the DIAGNOSTICS panel's header, not here.
• Themes: custom .theme files in a themes folder.
• Webpage: mobile mode, and back, forward and reload.
• Troubleshooting: the DevTools command (tbIdeDevTools_Show, which has no menu item).
• The View → Object Browser item does nothing; say so.