Overview of Base Template Editor

The Base Template Editor offers various options for creating new templates and editing existing templates for use with the File Manager® Base editor. Templates improve the functionality of the File Manager® editor by providing a particular interpretation of records stored in a resource. The Template Editor allows you to specify what that interpretation is by providing the tools necessary to easily create and modify templates. Having this functionality gives you additional control over the way you interact with your data. The Template Editor provides a similar level of editing functionality as is available in File Manager. For more information about the IBM File Manager ISPF template editor, see the IBM File Manager® for z/OS® User's Guide and Reference.

The Template Editor in File Manager® for Eclipse plug-in allows you to work with:

The template editor consists of three tabs which are described below.

Back to top

Layout Tab

The layout tab presents information about different layouts available in the currently edited template. Using this tab, you can specify various information about the template as follows:

Layout Tab
Template Editor Layout Tab Image

Back to top

By-Field Criteria Builder

This dialog helps you to construct criteria which can be used as Identification, Selection, or Related Identification Criteria.

By-Field Criteria Editor
By-field criteria editor Image

Back to top

Criteria Builder (free format)

This dialog allows you to write a criteria expression yourself. The dialog presents field information about the currently selected layout to assist you in writing the criteria expression.

You can double-click on a field in the table to insert the corresponding field number in the expression. You can also press Ctrl + Space to activate the content assist which gives you a list of fields with descriptions.

NOTE: Since the free-format criteria is more expressive than the by-field expression, free-format criteria and by-field criteria are not interchangeable. However, in both cases, you can specify hexadecimal strings in the form 'hhhhhh'x, where the value enclosed in quotes must be an even number of characters and contain valid hexadecimal characters, e.g. 'F0F1'X.

Criteria Editor (free-format)
Free criteria editor Image

Back to top

Copybooks Tab

The copybooks tab presents information about the copybooks which were used to create the template. This tab also allows you to modify the copybooks included in the template.

You can specify up to 12 copybook libraries for a template. When re-building the template, a specified set of copybook members are searched in the copybook libraries. The first member matched in a library is used when re-building the template.

When you select the Rebuild button, the editor rebuilds the template using the specified copybooks and the compiler options in the preference page (only if compiler options were specified for the currently connected host. Otherwise the default options will be used).

Copybooks Tab
Template Editor Copybooks Tab Image

Back to top

Information Tab

The information tab presents some basic information about the template such as the creation and modification dates. In addition, you can specify a description of the template.

Information Tab
Template Editor Information Tab Image

Back to top