Using point and shoot keys in ISPF

ISPF has had hot keys for many years – I have only just got round to using them.

At the top of ISPF screens there is usually an action bar. For example

   Menu  Utilities  Compilers  Options  Status  Help                       
 ────────────────────────────────────────────────────
                   ISPF Primary Option Menu                           
 Option ===>                                                                   

Where the actions are Menu, Utilities etc. The underlined letter is the hot key for the action.

To select Utilities, type U on the command line and press the “Actions” PF key. This will do the same as tabbing to the Utilities action bar item, and pressing enter. For me PF10 is set to Actions.

You can display your PF Key settings using the keys or pfshow command.

For people who like to use short cuts, have your command line at the top, and use the “home” key. This will get you to the command line. So you can do: home, U, PF10 and quickly get to the Utilities action bar item.

Who develops standard?

When the GUI standards came out I wondered why the standard was to put the command line at the bottom, as there was no “go to command line” key, you had to do “Home”, then shift, tab (to do back tab). This was too many keystrokes for me.