How to light a fluorescent lamp?
The lamp is simple to operate in principle. It doesn't need four terminals: simply supply a regulated current from one side to the other.

In practice, that's not trivial. Like any gas discharge lamp, it exhibits a negative resistance and so requires a ballast to limit the current in the lamp. This is not unlike the series resistor used to drive an LED, but it must operate under different conditions.

The tricky part is starting the arc. One way is to apply a very high voltage (many kilovolts) from one side to the other until you get an arc. Once the gas inside is ionized, the resistance between each side decreases tremendously, so the applied voltage must immediately be decreased to maintain a low current that won't destroy the bulb. Cold cathode lamps work this way, starting the arc with nothing more than high voltage.

This is not a cold cathode lamp. Between each pair of terminals on each end is an electric heater designed to facilitate thermionic emission. Essentially, the high temperature encourages charge carriers to wander off the cathode, reducing the voltage necessary to strike an arc.

What signals you apply to these pins is entirely up to you. There are countless ballast designs, each with a different method of lighting the tube. Some are little more that transformers. Some have microcontrollers. Some are made with cheap integrated circuitry from China. You can even put one in a microwave and light it without using the terminals at all.