Rational Developer for System z, Version 7.6

Help function

The Help function allows to branch to a Help documentation screen at any time.

Overview of the Help function

Help documentation is present at two levels:
  • Screen-level Help (how to use the screen),
  • Input field Help (for example, possible values).

The user branches to a Help screen by positioning the cursor in the appropriate field and pressing a PFkey, or by positioning a designated character in the 'Choice' (CH) field for screen-level Help, or in the desired input field for input field Help.

On the Help screen, the 'Choice' field enables the user to:
  • Return to the beginning of the Help documentation,
  • Continue scrolling through all Help documentation,
  • Stop the Help display and return to the initial work screen.

The Help screen must be defined but not described since its format is fixed and cannot be modified.

The code of this Screen will be XXHELP, where XX is the Dialog code; the external name must also be indicated (PACHELP by default). It must then be generated using the appropriate Type of Cobol and Map to generate, according to the environment.

Contents of the Help function

Documentary Help messages will be used to document Screens and Data Elements and to explain the rules for information coding and error detection.

These messages can be created as needed and generated on request to update the sequential error message file.

This file will be used to create the applications' error messages files. These are indexed files or databases depending on the environment.

The screen-level Help documentation comes from the -GE Lines section of the Screen -G Lines tab.

The input field Help documentation comes from the:
  • Data Element Description (-D Lines tab),
  • Documentation of the Screen's Data Elements (text or comments associated with the Data Element) on the -GE Lines; C or T lines following an F line,
  • Standard error messages (type 2 to 5),
  • User error messages (alphabetic type A to Z),
  • User error messages (numeric type 6 to 9).
  • Description lines or text calls (-GE Lines) associated with Data Element-related errors:
    • User errors: C or T lines following a U line.
    • User or standard errors: C or T lines with the error code.
Note: In order to have a better presentation of the HELP screen, the numeric type user error messages should be used rather than the alphabetic type, since the numeric type messages are grouped with the standard error messages.

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