Creating SMIT help information for a new task

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System Management Interface Tool (SMIT) helps are an extension of the SMIT program.

They are a series of helps designed to give you online information about the components of SMIT used to construct dialogs and menus. SMIT helps reside in a database, just as the SMIT executable code resides in a database. SMIT has two ways to retrieve SMIT help information:

Each of these methods provides a different way to retrieve SMIT helps from the SMIT help database.

Man pages method

Prerequisite tasks or conditions

Create a new SMIT task that requires help information.

Procedure

  1. Using any editor, create a file and enter help text inside the file. The file must adhere to the format specified by the man command. Put only one set of help information in a file.
  2. Give the help text file a title as specified by the man command.
  3. Place the help text file in the correct place in the manual subdirectory.
  4. Test the newly created file to ensure it works using the man command.
  5. Locate the file that contains the ASCII object stanza file format for the new SMIT task.
  6. Locate the help descriptor fields in the object stanzas of the file.
  7. Set the help_msg_loc help descriptor field equal to the title of the help text file. The title for the text file is also the parameter to pass to the man command. For example: 
    help_msg_loc = "xx", where "xx" = title string name
    This example executes the man command with the xx title string name.
  8. Leave the rest of the help descriptor fields empty.

Message catalog method

Prerequisite tasks or conditions

Create a new SMIT task that requires help information.

Procedure

  1. Use any editor to create a file and enter help messages inside the file. The .msg file must adhere to the format specified by the message facility.

    Note: An existing .msg file can also be used.

  2. Give each help message a set number (Set #) and a message number (MSG#). This allows the system to retrieve the proper help text.
  3. Use the gencat command to convert the .msg file into a .cat file. Place the .cat file in the correct directory according to the NLSPATH environment variable.
  4. Test the help messages using the dspmsg command.
  5. Locate the file that contains the ASCII object stanza file format for the new SMIT task.
  6. Locate the help descriptor fields in the object stanzas of the file.
  7. For each object stanza, locate the help_msg_id help descriptor field. Enter the Set# and Msg# values for the message in the .msg file. These values must adhere to the Messages Facility format. For example, to retrieve message #14 for set #2, set: 
    help_msg_id - "2,14"
  8. Set the help_msg_loc help descriptor field to the filename of the file containing the help text.
  9. Leave the other help descriptor fields empty.