FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

BASh v1.7.0 Released by Deep Sky Technologies, Inc.

BASh Pro, the Licensable Source Code, Also Updated

Vero Beach, FL – Friday, February 22nd, 2002: Deep Sky Technologies, Inc.,
today announced the release of BASh v1.7.0 for Macintosh and Windows. BASh
is a 4th Dimension component which provides extensive utility functionality
for 4D programmers, including a dynamic stack space module for reusing
variable space, encoding and cryptography routines, and much, much more.

BASh is the first 4D component publicly available after the release of 4D
v6.7.0 by 4D, Inc., and 4D SA. With this release, BASh is now the first
publicly available component that has been fully carbonized. And, in
keeping with the tradition of offering high quality and services, Deep Sky
Technologies, Inc., has made the BASh component available for free to the
developer community.

BASh v1.7.0 contains 17 new methods. All total, the BASh component now
consists of 345 methods across 27 modules of code. The manual is over 420
pages long and describes every single method call in detail. The manual has
been redone completely and now includes a complete bookmark listing
throughout the PDF. Documentation has now been provided for all of the
error codes through the BASh component. As well, this release of the BASh
component includes the documentation module, z_Library, as a separate 4D
Insider library.

Developers Everywhere are Talking

“By the way, just in case I’ve never said it before, BASh is
exceptionally cool. Thank you!”

– Christophe, Blowfish
xof@blowfish.com, 20020129

“New BASh Documentation is GREAT! For a number of reasons, I had been
reluctant to use BASh. I was primarily afraid of the instability of
components and after the Foresight debacle was not anxious to use 3rd party
tools especially for routines that if I had the time could duplicate. In
fact many of the routines included in BASh, I already had in my utility
routines. One set of routines, I had been meaning to write was for Date
Time Stamps. Since BASh already had the DTS module, I decided rather than
waste time re-inventing the wheel I should give BASh a try. That was a
couple of months ago. I now extensively use the DTS commands and have begun
using several other modules, particularly the DSS module. Overall the
methods in the component are very well organized. One area of BASh, that I
did find disappointing was the documentation because the PDF lacked
bookmarks. Yesterday you posted the latest version 1.62 and now the
documentation has been updated with bookmarks and is really great. I would
like to thank Deep Sky for making this component available and their
extensive support of the 4D community.”

– J. Larry Klein, MD, Director Center for Medical Informatics
Atlanta Cardiovascular Research Institute
larry@posmedic.com, 20020106

“Just thought I’d let you know that your last message caused a light to
suddenly flicker on in my head as to how 4D works. I’ve now got my database
almost all rebuilt with most all of the functions I ever wanted, in less
than a full day’s work! Now, I’m going to venture into actually defining my
relations (I’ve been doing this through Lasso) and putting a real user
interface on the whole thing. Thanks for your help and thanks so much for
your wonderful BASh component. I’m using the Date Time Stamps, Sequence
numbers, some encoding and I’ve just started playing with the array module.
I can’t imagine having done all of this without BASh.”

– Tom Wiebe, The Image Foundation
tom@imagefoundation.com, 20011208

“The real benefits here are that it (BASh) is already documented,
thoroughly debugged, and from a top-notch programmer. Heck, I trust HIS
code _more_ than my own! Mine doesn’t have hundreds (or thousands?) of
developers banging on it… I’ve been adding more and more of BASh to my
everyday arsenal. You don’t have to learn it all at once. The DSS component
alone is worth the added “clutter”. I personally think BASh is a great
little treasure chest.”

– Doug Hall
doug_hall@aidt.edu, 20010905

“If you are using 4D 6.7.x, get a copy of the BASh component from DeepSky.
Once you read through the documentation, you’ll realize how much time it
will save you-the string, date/time and array handling methods are worth
the download time in themselves. I haven’t gotten into other things yet,
but…”

– Bradley S. Criss
bscriss@home.com, 20010808

“4D should put BASh in the box with 4D. This free component provides dozens
of utility routines every 4D programmer is likely to need. I particularly
appreciate that many of the most common, and tedious, conversion tasks are
handled so gracefully. The dynamic variable assignment module is worth the
price of the component alone! This code eliminates one of the 4D languages
limits while treading lightly on RAM. Thanks to Deep Sky for their
generosity in writing and upgrading this great tool. I’ve never gotten a
250 page manual with a free developer tool before.”

– David Adams, Island Data Management
Kailua, HI
dpadams@island-data.com, 20010215

“… the DSS part looks real cool and there’s more than that in [BASh]
which saves me from trying to wrap up my own versions of similar nature
nicely…”

– Mark Mitchenall, Mitchenall.COM
London, England
mark@mitchenall.com, 20001211

“I have been using the DSS module for some time now. It’s rock solid code.
The ability to use the DSS module to implement a type of ‘pointer to local
variable’, makes programming 4D more intuitive and flexible. Combine DSS
with ObjectTools and you have a very powerful solution to handle all those
AreaList Pro objects in your database. And now it’s bundled with a bunch of
other useful stuff. So why not do yourself a favour, install BASh. You’ll
thank yourself for it, I guarantee it.”

– Phillip Hall, Sapphire Software Pty. Limited
Redfern, New South Wales, Australia
phillip@sapphire.com.au, 20001123

“Even if you only use the variable management system (DSS), this component
will allow you to structure your code as never before. This and the other
modules provided in BASh will provide even experienced developers with
features that they would have been using for years if only they had been
able to invest their time in the coding effort. Most of us have not.”

– John Macrae, Lamina Limited
Forncett St. Peter, Norwich, England
jmacrae@lamina.co.uk, 20001127

Features in the BASh component

The BASh component consists of many different modules of methods which
provide extensive utility services in 4th Dimension applications. The list
of modules currently available in the BASh component is:

# ARR – Array sizing, management, and manipulation methods;
# BLOB – BLOB management and manipulation methods;
# CODEC – encoding and decoding support for common formats;
CONV – conversion methods to handle data and type conversions;
# CRYPT – encryption and decryption routines;
# DATE – provides basic date manipulation routines;
DSS – Dynamic Stack Space; reusable variable management system;
# DTS – Date-Time Stamps; generation and manipulation methods;
# ENV – environmental information (program, OS, CPU, etc.);
# FILE – path and file name utilities;
INIT – module and component initialization;
INT – interruption manager;
NULL – Variable clearing and initialization methods;
NVP – named value pair utilities and management;
PROS – process information accessors;
PTEXT – parameter text replacement routines;
QUIT – controlled clean up of BASh data structures;
# RES – resource management and utility methods;
SEM – Semaphore management methods;
SEQ – flexible sequence number module;
SERNO – serial number generation and confirmation methods;
STR – string manipulation, formatting, and filtering methods;
TIME – Time manipulation methods;
TYPE – Variable type comparison methods;
URL – URL creation and extraction routines;
VAR – Variable utility methods;
# WORD – manipulators for non-native four-byte values.

* – new to the latest release of BASh
# – expanded within the latest release of BASh

New Features in v1.7.0

Version 1.7.0 of the BASh component contains 17 new methods. Additions have
been made to the ARR, BLOB, CODEC, CRYPT, DATE, DTS, ENV, FILE, RES, and
WORD modules.

Of particular interest, support for MD4 digest calculations and DES
encoding and decoding is now available directly in the BASh component.
Utility routines across many other modules have been added to the component.

Full support for 4D Carbon is now available with this release of BASh. The
BASh archive now contains fully carbonized versions of the Affix documents,
as well as separate versions for 4D v6.7.x and 4D Carbon.

The Developer Documentation for BASh now includes complete documentation
for all of the error codes within the component. This includes both a
direct listing of the error codes themselves and a listing of all of the
methods with the error codes that each can generate.

Many bug fixes have been included in this version. As well, there have been
many improvements made in the speed of the MD5 digest calculation routines.

Version 1.7.0 also includes a new Affix BASh document for placement in the
4DX folder. The Affix BASh document contains all of the data and resources
necessary for the BASh component to operate seemlessly in all 4D projects.

4D Pack, the plugin available from 4D, Inc., and 4D SA, is now a part of
the BASh component. Macintosh and Windows versions of 4D Pack have been
included with the BASh component archive for ease of installation into all
4D projects.

All of the new methods within the BASh v1.7.0 release are readily
upgradeable for current users of BASh. There is are no changes required in
existing code to begin using the new version of BASh with the exception of
a single addition to be made in some of the database methods.

Pricing and Availability

The BASh component is officially released as peepware. For those unfamiliar
with peepware, it is similar to postcardware except that Marshmallow Peeps
(more information about Marshmallow Peeps available at
http://www.marshmallowpeeps.com/ ) are requested from those developers that
find the BASh component to be useful in their 4th Dimension projects.

The BASh component can be downloaded by following the Downloads link on the
Deep Sky Technologies, Inc., web site, located at:

http://www.deepskytech.com/

The BASh component can also be found by following the Freeware link on the
4D Zine web site and searching for “BASh”. The 4D Zine web site can be
found at:

http://www.4dzine.com/

About Deep Sky Technologies, Inc.

Based in Vero Beach, Florida, Deep Sky Technologies, Inc., provides
software development, consulting, hosting, and colocation services. Founded
in 1997, Deep Sky Technologies, Inc., develops and supports a wide variety
of software development tools and services to aid in the creation of custom
applications and web sites for the Macintosh and Windows platform. For more
information, please visit our web site at http://www.deepskytech.com/ .

For more information contact:

Steven G. Willis
President, Deep Sky Technologies, Inc.
sgwillis@deepskytech.com
http://www.deepskytech.com/
772.794.9494

You can also join the Deep Sky Technologies, Inc., announcement
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http://www.deepskytech.com/mailinglist_signup.html