Specifying help data sets

You can use the HELP statement in SYS1.PARMLIB member IKJTSOxx to define help data sets for different languages. For the list of languages that IBM® provides help data sets for, see the appropriate installation manual.

On the HELP statement you can:

Specify help for any number of languages
Specify up to 255 data sets to be searched for help text in a particular language

To define help data sets in IKJTSOxx, do the following:

If you have not already done so, copy the sample member IKJTSO00 from SYS1.SAMPLIB to SYS1.PARMLIB. You may have already copied IKJTSO00 to specify other installation defaults.
You can create alternate members using the IKJTSOxx naming convention.
Edit your IKJTSOxx member in SYS1.PARMLIB and locate the HELP statement.
Specify the operands for your installation requirements.

For more information about SYS1.PARMLIB, see .


                     .-,--------.     
                     V          |     
>>-HELP--language--(---'dsname'-+-)----------------------------><

language: specifies the language of the associated help data sets. You must specify the three-character language code for the language. MMSLSTxx contains a list of valid language codes.
dsname: specifies the name of the data set containing the help text for the associated language. You may specify from 1 to 255 data sets, separating each with a comma. The list of data set names must be enclosed in parentheses.

Note: When setting up the HELP parmlib statement, consider the DYNAMNBR parameter on the JCL procedure used by LOGON. Each data set added increases the number of the data sets dynamically allocated during the TSO/E session.

A sample SYS1.PARMLIB HELP statement is shown in the following example.

HELP ENU(’SYS1.HELP’,’SYS1.HELP.MIGLIB’)
     ESP(’SYS1.ESP.HELP’)
     JPN(’SYS1.JPN.HELP’,’ANYUSER.TEST.JPN.HELP’)

When the HELP command locates information, it first checks the SYSHELP ddname for allocation. If the file is allocated, it searches only those data sets. If the file is not allocated, the HELP command checks the user profile table (UPT) for the primary and secondary languages, allocates the corresponding data sets to a file, and searches that file for the help information. If no entry is found for the primary or secondary language, U.S. English is used as the default.

In all cases, if a user's primary language is not supported at the user's terminal or if allocation problems occur, the HELP command attempts to use the secondary language. If both attempts fail, U.S. English is used.

You can use the PARMLIB command to list the current HELP defaults in SYS1.PARMLIB and dynamically update them (with the contents of IKJTSOxx) without having to re-IPL the system. You can also use the PARMLIB command to check the syntax of the HELP statement. For more information about using SYS1.PARMLIB and the PARMLIB command, see .