Help-Windows for OS390

As online systems have become more and more sophisticated, the need for immediate access to procedural instructions has increased substantially. Terminal operators do not want to browse through manuals to find answers, they want answers at the touch of a key. Text writers and documentation personnel want to maintain their documentation on-line, where changes can easily be made. Programmers and other users do not have time to update printed manuals and insert pages, and management doesn't want to go through expensive re-prints to new procedural manuals.

Help-Windows overcomes these issues by providing users with 2 major functions:

• Full on-line text maintenance: Complete manuals can be created and maintained on-line and sub-divided into system, documents, sections and subjects. Text is easily created and maintained with common paragraphs or entire subjects included from one document to another, with nested includes supported. Printing orders can be inserted in the text to control document appearance. Entire manuals or selected subjects can be printed or displayed on the terminal in list form. Automatic page numbering, section titles, running headers, table of contents and index creation are supported.

• On-line text retrieval from application transactions: Selected sections of a manual, or standalone documents can be keyed to any application transaction in the on-line environment. A user-defined PF or PA key can be used to retrieve the associated text while operating the transaction. The associated text can be displayed either in full-screen mode or in a "window" on the screen, the position and size of which is defined by the text writer. Help windows can be referenced at the transaction level, the screen level or at the individual field level. The terminal operator uses the cursor to "point" to the data for which a help window is required. When finished with the help text, control returns to the application transaction at the touch of a key.