Help in Filer

Most people know that pressing the [F1] function key, in Filer, opens a Help screen. Unlike context-sensitive help screens the HP Palmtop uses a combination of hypertext and function keys to access the Help you want.

On the Palmtops, hypertext appears as words surrounded with boxed borders. When you press an arrow key or the Tab or Shift+Tab keys a highlight hops from one hypertext word to another. If you press the [Enter] key you will get more Help on the highlighted word.

You may also navigate through the Help screens with function keys. For example in Filer, when you press the [F1] function key twice, you'll get an Index of all Filer's features. The screen is almost entirely hypertext. Press the arrow keys to skip from one word or phrase to another. When you press the [Enter] key, the text will change to Help on a specific topic.

The [F8] function key will return you to the previous screen. Either the [F9] function key or the [ESC] key will "Cancel" the Help function entirely. You can use the [F6] and [F7] function keys or the PageUp or PageDown keys to move through the Help screens that have more than one page of content.

To try this out start FILER and press the [F1] function key twice to open the Index screen.

Press the [TAB] key repeatedly until the word "Filter" is highlighted. Then press the [ENTER] key. The "Displaying Matching Files" screen will appear. It tells you that you can press [MENU] O F (Options Filter) to open the "Show Only" box where you can type in a "filter", e.g. *.wk1 and press the [F10] (OK) function key to "lock in" the filter. (See the MS-DOS Tip below for an explanation of wildcards and how to use them.)