Maintaining Application Components › Maintaining Help › Facilities for Help Text Editing and Formatting › Display Attributes

Display Attributes

Some of the macros allow characters to be specified that are used as display attributes (for example, to control color and highlighting).

The following predefined attribute characters are provided:

! (hexadecimal value X’5A’)

This display attribute is used to highlight important help text—for example, the name of a command. It is based on the system variable &ZPOUTHIC.

‘ (hexadecimal value X’79’)

This display attribute is used for normal help text. It is based on the system variable &ZPLABELC, which is the default text display attribute.

| (hexadecimal value X’6A’)

This display attribute is used for headings when you are not using the .PH and .CH macros. It is based on the system variable &ZPSUBTLC.

Note: This is the EBCDIC broken bar character.

You should use this predefined set of display attributes to ensure that help text is consistent in appearance and conforms to installation standards.

If you need to use one of the above attribute characters as a real character, the .RA help macro can be used to remove a predefined attribute character definition.

Note: Do not use the asterisk (*) or ampersand (&) characters as display attributes—these characters are reserved by the system.