Chapter 3: Finding Information

Apart from this Getting Started book, all the documentation is online only. You get to it from the Windows Start menu, or from Net 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 Windows help. The rest is in the form of online books written as Web pages. You get to these from the Windows Start menu or from the Net 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 tooltip.
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 Net Express window.
Try context help.
If you want information about a menu item or control, click the Context Help button on the toolbar, then click the menu item or control.
Look in the help, using the help index.
If Net Express is running, click Help Topics on the Help menu. Otherwise, from the Start menu, click Programs, then MERANT Net Express, then 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 an online book via a help topic. 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 MERANT Net Express, then Bookshelf. Then select Master Index. Then, in the left-hand pane, click Master Index. 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 the 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 Bookshelf 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 Net Express Help, the Readme Help, and the Help for individual options such as Dialog System. 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 frame containing the text.
The Net 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.
Two online books are especially worth looking at after this one. The Solutions Guide guides you through developing certain frequently required types of application. The Migration Cookbook gives advice on migrating from other COBOL systems to Net Express.
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 text 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.
If you have any problem installing or running Net Express, look in the Readme Help to see if it's a known problem. From your Windows Start menu, click Programs, then MERANT Net Express, then Readme. You can also get to the Readme Help via the contents of the Net Express Help. Information in the Readme Help is listed in the index of the Readme Help, not in the index of the Net Express Help.
For support, updates, and information on Net Express, use WebSync, a facility in Net Express to access a MERANT Web site. To start WebSync, click WebSync on the Help menu.
To find MERANT's contact addresses and numbers, see the Readme Help.

Additional Software

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