How to disable PF1 on a natural help text screen?

Hi,

I have created a help text for a field. When PF1 is pressed with cursor on this field, the help text is displayed. If PF1 is again pressed then the help text for P/CS/CD-HELP/1 is displayed. This is a generic screen. We donot want this displayed. Can PF1 on the help text be disabled? Thanks in advance.

Gb.

I have a feeling we do not have the whole problem description.

When I try to duplicate what you have described, I get a NAT1148 which says there is no help for this field; which is proper.

Do you have a field on the Help Map which does have a Help associated with it? Or do you have a helproutine associated with the Help Map?

steve

I’ve got a similar situation. Our map fields without a help routine assigned to them receive the NAT1148 error when the user hits the PF1 key, which is expected.

Until I can get the correct help routines assigned to these fields, I would like to have a general ‘catch-all’ help routine for each map. Any suggestions?

Additionally, is there a way to graphically change the field or cursor when the cursor enters a field that DOES have a help routine assigned to it, without having to hit the Enter key first? I would like to cue the user that there is help available for a field and can then hit the PF1 key.

Thanks for any help for this newbie.

Hi Bobby;

Lets start with the last paragraph. When you tab around a screen, Natural does not know what is going on. There is no equivalent to “getting focus”.

So how to “cue” the user? You might try color; Green for “help available”; Red for “no help available”. Or, you could intensify for help available, normal for no help available, etc.

Now the earlier problem. You could associate a Helproutine (or simply a Help Map) with the Map itself. This could be as simple as a pop up window which says no help is presently available for this field. If you do this with a helproutine (rather than just a help map), you could pass the name of the variable to the helproutine for a more complete message than would possible with a Help Map.

steve

I like your color idea. (Quite obvious in hindsight.) As I assign a help routine, I can just change the field color attribute, too. I thought I could try to use the *curs-field and *pos(fieldx) with a control variable to change the atrtribute on the fly.

I am still learning about maps and help maps. Do I understand your suggestion that if I associate a help map to my screen map, the PF1 key will default to the screen map help map unless it is overridden by a field help map? BTW - that is my intention to have a simple pop up with url links to web help.

I just found the forum today and I’ve seen a lot of useful information, most of it with your name. You do an excellent job of explaining things. Thanks for your time!