Configuring Assembler context-sensitive help for the z Systems LPEX Editor

You can configure the z Systems® LPEX Editor to work with z/OS® UNIX subprojects. You can create a user macro help file that maps selected macro names to specific help pages. This mapping specifies which online help page opens when you select a macro name and press F1.

About this task

You can use the HLASM parser to access custom help that you create for use with the product. The HLASM parser is an extension of the LPEX HLASM parser.

The user macro help file is a text file that can use any file name and any extension. For example, zoshlas2.hlp. If you created custom help for your own custom macros, you can use the toc.xml file that you created for your custom help to automatically associate macro names with corresponding help pages.

Procedure

To create a user macro help file, complete the following steps:

Using a text editor such as LPEX, create a file to store the mapping between macro names and online help files.
For each macro that you want to map to an online help page, type the mapping between the user macro name and the help page that you want to open when you select this macro name and press F1.
Use the following format:
```
macro_name=help_path
```
macro_name

The opcode for the macro that you want to map to an online help page, such as CLST. You must specify the macro name in uppercase. If the HLASM parser is configured to allow macro names to be specified in lowercase, these names are converted to uppercase before the parser searches for a match.

help_path
- The help page that you want to open for the selected macro. You must specify the help path in the following format:
  /plugin_name/path/file_name
  You must specify the forward slash (/) before the plug-in name, for example:
  /com.ibm.uss.projects.doc/topics/comparelogicalstring.html
  If the help page that you want to map to is an external page, use the following format:
  http://<url>
  For example:
  http://www.companyxyz.com/software/macros.htm
The resulting line is displayed as shown in the following example:
```
CLST=/com.ibm.uss.projects.doc/topics/comparelogicalstring.html
```
Save and close the file.
Do one of the following steps:
- To set up the user macro help file for MVS members, add the name of your user macro help file to the list in the User Macro F1 Help Files section of the HLASM Parser preference page. For more information about this preference page, see the related topics.
- To set up the user macro help file for z/OS UNIX System Services, add the name of your user macro help file to the list in the User Macro F1 Help Files section of the HLASM tab in the Editor Options preference page. For more information about setting HLASM options, see the related topics.

What to do next

If you change this file, you must reload it for the parser to reread the file and load any new definitions. To reload the user macro help file, right-click the file and select Reload User Macro F1 Help Files.