Online Help

Online Help — What is it?

The online help is the context-sensitive help layer of the ForgeIEC editor. Pressing F1 in the editor opens your browser directly on the help page for the currently focused element (dialog, panel, variable table, codegen action, …).

URL scheme

All help pages live under a uniform scheme:

https://forgeiec.io/<language>/help/<topic>/

• <language> follows the editor locale (de, en, fr, es, ja, tr, zh, ar); defaults to de when no localized page exists
• <topic> is a slug that is the same across languages and not translated

So you can open a help page directly in your browser without launching the editor.

Available topics

Editor & languages

• Structured Text (ST) — ST editor + language foundations, bit access, qualified pool references
• Instruction List (IL) — accumulator-based IEC language with CR register
• Function Block Diagram (FBD) — graphical wiring of functions, function blocks and variables
• Ladder Diagram (LD) — power-rail metaphor: contacts and coils
• Sequential Function Chart (SFC) — step-transition model for sequencers and mode machines

Model & variables

• Variables management — the Variables panel as central view onto the FAddressPool: columns, filters, bulk operations, safety switches
• Library — IEC 61131-3 standard library + ForgeIEC extensions + user-defined blocks
• Properties panel — inline editor for the bus element selected in the Project tree
• Preferences — central configuration dialog: editor, runtime, PLC, AI Assistant

Bus & hardware

• Bus configuration — PLCopen XML schema for industrial fieldbus configuration

Project

• Project file format (.forge) — anatomy of a ForgeIEC project file: PLCopen XML with ForgeIEC extensions

General

• Test coverage — 117 automated tests for the IEC language feature set, standard blocks and multi-task threading
• Open Source philosophy — background: more than software, a societal idea

In the editor

• F1 on a focused element → context-sensitive help page
• Help → Online Help in the main menu → entry point (this page)
• Help → About ForgeIEC → version info + license