Our goal is to provide to context-sensitive help for all of GIM's areas, to describe the meaning of each area, and the meanings of all the keys that can be pressed at any time. This context-sensitive help is provided by GIM's Help Area, which is available at any point by pressing the <F9> key.
This chapter will explain how to use the Help Area. To start with, pick an area -- any area -- and press <F9>.
Before we begin with examples, you should be sure that you received a file called GIMHLP.GIM with your GIM diskettes. This file should have been automatically installed in the same directory where the GIM program was installed. If GIM can't find that file in the same directory with your GIM executables, the features of GIM's Help Area will not be available.
What you see when you first bring up GIM's Help Area is a window containing a number of paragraphs of text describing where you are in GIM, and what function keys are allowed from where you are. You will also see a scroll bar on the right-hand edge of that window, and there will be a cursor inside that window.
You can use the arrow keys or the mouse to move the cursor around within that window. You can also use the <HOME>, <END>, <PAGE UP> and <PAGE DOWN> keys, or use the mouse to click on (or hold) the top or bottom of the scroll bars. If text extends beyond the bottom or top of the window, the arrow keys will cause the help text to scroll with the cursor.
Try these, and you'll see what we mean.
Some of the text may be highlighted differently than the rest of the text. If you move the cursor to that highlighted text, you may find that the highlighting color of that text changes. If that happens, that is a signal to you that the highlighted text is the title of another GIM Help Item, and if you press the enter key while the cursor is on that text, GIM's Help Area will open up that new Help Item. You can keep doing this as many times as you like.
If you've opened up more than one Help Item in this way, you can then back out successively by pressing the <ESCAPE> key. (For this reason, the <ESCAPE> key DOES NOT mean the same thing as the <F10> key, and the <ESCAPE> key WILL NOT exit you out of the Help Area. You should not get in the habit of thinking of the <ESCAPE> key as being synonymous with the <F10> key. In most cases it is, but this is one exception!)
Again, try this, and you'll see what we mean.
Be sure to read the bottom two lines of the screen when the Help Area is active; it will list all of the cursor keys that are meaningful at any given moment.
All of the titles that GIM's Help Area has to offer can be listed by pressing <F1> from the Help Area. When the index is displayed, you can press <F1> again to get back to the Help Item that you were reading. While the Help Index is displayed, you can use the arrow keys to move the cursor to any item that is of interest, just like you do in an ordinary Help Item.
Try this, and you'll see what we mean.
GIM's Help Area window can be repositioned into any of ten predefined locations on your screen.
These locations are selectable by pressing the <SHIFT>+function keys from within the Help Area. Specifically:
<SHIFT>+<F1> moves to the top half of your screen
<SHIFT>+<F2> moves to the bottom half of your screen
<SHIFT>+<F3> moves to the left half of your screen
<SHIFT>+<F4> moves to the right half of your screen
<SHIFT>+<F5> moves to the top left corner of your screen
<SHIFT>+<F6> moves to the top right corner of your screen
<SHIFT>+<F7> moves to the bottom left corner of your screen
<SHIFT>+<F8> moves to the bottom right corner of your screen
<SHIFT>+<F9> takes up the full screen
<SHIFT>+<F10> moves to the center of your screen
When you set this location in this way, your settings for each folder are remembered from one GIM session to the next.
Most of the text in GIM Help windows will wrap around to fit the size of the window. Certain text, however, of necessity does not wrap around. (See, for example, the "Copyright Notice" Help Item.) In those situations, use a window location that uses the full width of the screen -- either <SHIFT>+<F1>, <SHIFT>+<F2>, or <SHIFT>+<F9>.
The help window normally has lines drawn around it, to set it off from the rest of the screen. This window frame can be turned on or off. To do this, press <CTRL>+<F2>. Press this key again to turn these frames back on. Like the window position described in the previous section, the status of these window frames is also remembered for each folder from one GIM session to the next.
As we said, our goal is to provide context-sensitive help for all of GIM's areas and functions. If you ever find that a Help Item isn't available where you think it should be, or if you find a Help Item that isn't very helpful, please bring it to our attention.