User Access Utilities › Help Text › Writing Help Text › Text Management/38 Control Characters

Text Management/38 Control Characters

Text Management/38 control characters that have a special meaning when included in the text source; they direct how the text will be printed; for instance
‘. pa’ causes a new page to be thrown. All Text Management/38 control characters begin with a ‘.‘.

The Toolkit help text program interprets most Text Management/38 control characters in the same way as the Text Management/38 print function: for instance, ‘.date’ causes the current date to be displayed at the indicated point. Certain control characters, however, are ignored because they are inappropriate for an interactive display, for instance ‘. sk’ (skip).

Text Management/38 text control characters can be used to format your help text documents, even if you do not have the Text Management/38 utility. For the benefit of those who do not have Text Management/38, the control characters are summarized in the following table.