Chapter 3: Finding Information

Apart from this Getting Started book, all the documentation is online only. You get to it from the Windows 95, Windows 98 or Windows NT Start menu or from Mainframe Express's Help menu. This Getting Started book is both online and in printed book form.

Much of the documentation is in the form of online help. The rest is in the form of online books written as Web pages. You get to these from the Windows 95 or Windows NT Start menu or from the Mainframe Express help - when you click a book's button in the help, the book is displayed in your Web browser.

When you're looking for information, we recommend trying the different kinds of documentation in the following order:

See if there's a tool tip.
If you want information about a field or control, try leaving the mouse pointer on it for a moment. A brief description of its purpose may be displayed, either beside it or at the bottom of the Mainframe Express window.
Try context help.
If you want information about a menu item or control, click the Context Help button on the toolbar or at the top right, then click the menu item or control. Alternatively, put your mouse pointer on the menu item or control (don't click if doing so will start a function), and press F1. You may also be able to right-click on the item and click What's This? on a popup menu that appears.
Look in the help, using the help index.
If Mainframe Express is running, click Help Topics on the Help menu. Otherwise, from the Start menu, click Programs, then Micro Focus Mainframe Express, then Mainframe Express Help. Then click the Index tab and enter a relevant word. The index will automatically position at the entry, if one exists. Alternatively, scroll through the index to find what you want.

In some cases the help index takes you to a help topic that directs you to an online book. If this happens, click Index in the Table of Contents of the online book, click the first letter of the phrase you're looking for, then scroll the index to find the phrase.
Look in the online books, using the Master Index.
From the Start menu, click Programs, then Micro Focus Mainframe Express, then Mainframe Express Online Books. Then select Master Index (Online Books) and click Master Index in the left-hand pane. Click the first letter of the word you want at the top of the right-hand pane, then scroll through the index to find the word.
Look in the help using Find.
Return to Help Topics, click the Find tab, and enter the word you're looking for. If this is the first time you've used Find since installing, the system will take a little while to create a dictionary.

There is no equivalent to Find for the online books.
If you still haven't found the information you want, repeat Steps 3 through 5 using some other relevant word.

You will find it useful to select the Contents tab in Help Topics and spend a few minutes looking through the Contents to see what the help covers. Similarly, select each book in turn from the Mainframe Express Online Books folder and look through their contents to see what they cover.

Here are some further tips:

The online help is mainly for quick help. To read about a subject in depth, look first in the appropriate online book, and if you don't find it look in the help. The books are all accessible from the help Contents. There are separate indexes for the books, the Mainframe Express Help, the Readme Help, and the Help for individual options such as CICS Option. The index for the books is called the Master Index because it covers all the books. The books have individual indexes as well.
You can print out the online books from your Web browser. Each Web page is one chapter; so if your Browser's print function prints one page, each print operation prints one chapter. To be certain of printing the text rather than the Contents list, click first in the pane containing the text.
The Mainframe Express CD-ROM contains the Adobe Acrobat Reader and an Adobe Acrobat file for each book, from which you can print the whole book in one operation. You are authorized to print one copy of each book for your own personal use.
Links in the online books are either to other chapters or books, or to the online glossary. To return, use your Web browser's Back button. You may have to click it twice to get the correct Contents list back.
The online books have the Contents in the left-hand frame and the text in the right-hand frame. On some browsers, when you click a link in the Contents, you can get the text in a full frame by dragging the mouse a little before releasing the button. If you click a link in the text you get the Contents of the target chapter in a full frame.
To get a popup menu with functions appropriate to an item, right-click the item. These functions often include What's This?.
To get the syntax for a COBOL reserved word visible in a source view window in the IDE, put the cursor anywhere within the word, then press F1. Alternatively, right-click on the word and click Help on the popup menu. You can do the same for an error message in the Output window.
If you have any problem installing or running Mainframe Express, look in the Readme Help to see if it's a known problem. From your Windows Start menu, click Programs, then Micro Focus Mainframe Express, then Readme. Information in the Readme Help is listed in the index of the Readme Help, not in the index of the Mainframe Express Help.

You can also get to the ReadMe Help even without having Mainframe Express installed. It's a WinHelp (.hlp) file in the root of the Mainframe Express CD. It's the file whose name begins with "read" - the next few letters of the name may vary. Open it using Windows Explorer, or by using winhelp or winhlp32 from a command prompt.
If you are migrating from an earlier version of Mainframe Express, look in the topic Backward Compatibility in the Readme Help for advice.
For support, updates, and information on Mainframe Express, use WebSync, a facility in Mainframe Express to access a MERANT Web site. To start WebSync, click WebSync on the Help menu.
You will find the contact addresses and numbers of MERANT offices that deal with Micro Focus products either in the Readme Help or on a separate sheet included in the product packaging.

Installing and Licensing

Start Here for the Tutorials