User Access Utilities › Help Text › Writing Help Text › Purpose of Toolkit Directives

Purpose of Toolkit Directives

For details on the directives, see Specifying Help Text Directives later in this chapter. The directives allow you:

• To specify points in the document to which the help display program may jump:

  — At entry (vectored entry).

  — Under user control once within the document (index choices).

• To specify an index to be displayed on entry or at the request of the user.
• To specify a title to appear on the top of all help displays.
• To specify help window attributes.

Example

The following diagram illustrates how a help text document might be structured to provide both an index and to support vectored entry, that is, display of the help text starting at a specified point.

There are three ways of displaying the document:

• Vectored entry by cursor location

YDSPHLP MBR(FRED) LABEL(*CSRLOC) CSRLOC(rrrccc)

1. A cursor coordinate is passed into the help display program.
2. The help display program uses the vector table at the beginning of the text to translate this into a label.
3. The help display program displays the help text indicated by the specified label.

• Vectored entry by label

YDSPHLP MBR(FRED) LABEL(label-name)

1. A label name is passed into the help display program.
2. The help display program displays the help text indicated by the specified label.

• Entry by indexDisplay Help Text command (YDSPHLP)

YDSPHLP MBR(FRED)

1. The help display program displays extended help.
2. The user specifies an option from the help index.
3. The help display program translates this into a label.
4. The help display program displays the help text indicated by the specified label.