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.