About C/C++ Productivity Tools online help

C/C++ Productivity Tools online help is a collection of help topics, references, and other information about C/C++ Productivity Tools.  Browsing the online help is much like browsing the Internet.  Hypertext links take you from one topic to another.  You can also search for words or phrases you want to find.

Click the plus and minus symbols on the left to expand or collapse the topic contents.

You can find information on C/C++ Productivity Tools components in several ways. For more information on each of these methods, follow the links.

By topic
To view topics organized by type -- concept, tasks, reference, or tutorial -- click on the Topics section in the left-hand frame. For example, to find out how to set a breakpoint, look in the Tasks section.
By component 
To view all the information for a given component, expand the Components section on the left, and then expand the section for the desired component.  For example, to find all the information about Performance Analyzer, expand Components and then Performance Analyzer.
By following related information links
Most help topics provide a list of related concepts, tasks, and reference information.  To see the list, scroll to the end of the topic.
By searching
To search for a word or phrase, type it in the search field and press Enter.
By pressing F1 from the user interface
To access context-sensitive help for any window in C/C++ Productivity Tools, press F1.  To access reference help for C/C++ or High Level Assembler language elements, select the language element in the Editor and press F1. 

Information types
Topics in the online help are grouped by information type:

Concepts
Concept help provides background information on terms, constructs, and frameworks used by C/C++ Productivity Tools.  These topics provide an overview or general picture of what a component does.
Tasks
Task help guides you through procedures.  Generally, task topics answer the question, "How do I do this?"
Reference
Reference help consists largely of reference information for the Distributed Debugger, Editor and Performance Analyzer .

Components
Each tool in C/C++ Productivity Tools for OS/390 is called a component.  When you install C/C++ Productivity Tools, you can customize the installation to include or exclude certain components.  The online help only includes documentation for the components that you have installed.  If you later install another component, its documentation will be added to the online help. The Getting Started tutorial is always available.

One of the C/C++ Productivity Tools CDs includes softcopy books for each component, in PDF format.  These documents provide an easy way to view and print much of the important information for a component. Click PDF Documents for more information.

Related information links
When you follow a related link, a Synchronize button appears in the upper right-hand corner of the help topic.  If you click this button, the list of topics in the left-hand frame is refreshed to show you where the new topic fits.

Searching
C/C++ Productivity Tools help uses a full-text search engine that ranks results based on your search request.

By default, if your search argument contains more than one word, any of those words may cause a match (logical OR).  For example, the following search argument returns hits on topics that include the terms "mouse", "pointer", or "mouse pointer":

mouse pointer

You can explicitly include or exclude words from search results by using the plus (+) and minus (-) signs. To ensure that a word is included in a multi-term search, precede it with a plus sign (logical AND). To exclude hits that contain a particular word, precede it with a minus sign (logical NOT). For example, the following search argument returns hits that include "mouse", but do not include "pointer":

+mouse -pointer

To search for an exact phrase, enclose the phrase in quotation marks (" ").  For example, the following phrase returns hits on topics that include the term "mouse pointer", but not those that include only "mouse", only "pointer", or the two words non-consecutively.

"mouse pointer"

Click the Search Options link to change the number of search hits returned, whether searches are fuzzy or exact, and which information types are searched.

Context-sensitive (F1) help
Context-sensitive help can be accessed only by pressing F1 from the user interface, or by including F1 help in the search options.