RSE Tips

Answer: If you are editing an RPGLE source member, the text in your Outline view probably says "Press Refresh to update view". Of course, that begs the question "What's Refresh?" The Refresh button looks like 2 small yellow arrows chasing each other in a circle.
In the Outline view it appears near the upper right hand corner of the view. Pressing this button will populate your Outline view. You'll want to remember this button because you'll also need to use it after you have made changes to the source member to refresh the information in the Outline view.

If you are editing a DDS source member, the Outline view is populated automatically. You need only to expand the + sign to see the record(s) and fields. If you are editing a CLP member or an RPG member (not RPGLE) then you will only see labels (in CL) and subroutines (in RPG). For COBOL source members, the Outline view contains some (not all levels) of your data definitions and your paragraph names. Clearly, Outline view is most useful for the RPGLE language.

Answer: If you're working with the default version of the RSE perspective, the most common reason for this is that you have closed it, perhaps by mistake. It's easy to do - we still manage to accidentally close it from time to time - usually by pressing the X in the tab at the top of the view. We often make this mistake when we have been looking at the Outline view in full screen mode (i.e. after double clicking on the tab to make the view go into full screen mode).

Now you're probably wondering how to get it back. There are 2 ways. One requires a bit more work but tends to be more disruptive. Let's look at both.

1. The easiest way is to use the Reset Perspective option from the Window pull-down menu in the workbench. However, this will reset all the views in the perspective to their original or last saved state, so if you have made some views Fast Views (see below for what that means) or if you have changed the sizes or positions of the views in your workbench, you'll lose all that kind of customization.
2. The less disruptive way, although it requires a little more work, is to use the Show View option from the Window pull down menu. This leads to another menu where you should take the Other option. Then key Outline into the text box at the top of the Show View dialog window. This should highlight the Outline view in the list. Press OK and your Outline view will reappear. Alternatively, rather than use the text box you can simply expand the General category in the dialog window to locate the Outline view.

Answer: There are multiple ways, but probably the simplest way is to make the Outline view a Fast View. If you have not used Fast Views before, you are in for a treat. Almost any view in the workbench can be made a Fast View, but we find it particularly useful for the Outline view. To do this right click anywhere on the bar at the top of the view (i.e. click on or just to the right of the tab at the top of the view) and select Fast View.
By default, that will "park" the view in the bottom left margin of the perspective - which is probably not where you want it since every time it pops-up it will overlay the left-hand side of the edit window, covering most of your code. For most people, the best place to park it is on the right hand side of the perspective where it will only overlay the (mostly empty) right-hand side of your source window. To do this, hover your cursor over the small gray dots just in front of the Fast View icons in the lower margin until the cursor turns into a 4-headed arrow, as shown here:
At this point, you can right click and from the pop-up menu select Dock on -> Right or you can simply drag the Fast View icons to the top right margin. All Fast Views must be docked in the same location - i.e., you can't have Outline docked on the right and your Error List Fast View docked on the bottom. However, you can choose the orientation (horizontal or vertical) for each. Read on for more details.

To use the Outline view, click its Fast View icon, and it will pop out. You only need to click somewhere in the edit window to make it pop back in again. Don't click the X on the tab in the Outline view or you will close the view completely. Not to worry if you do that by accident, though - just see the answer to the earlier question above to get it back.

As we said earlier, almost any view can be made a Fast View. Some of the others that we find particularly useful as Fast Views include the iSeries Error List, iSeries Indent and, for those who still find the need for prompting while in the editor, the iSeries Source Prompter. (We have happily replaced prompting 99% of the time by using the tab key plus the cursor-oriented format line in the editor.) All of those views work better in a horizontal orientation. To change the orientation of a Fast View, simply right click on its Fast View icon and use the Orientation option.

Once you get a nice set of Fast Views that work well for your style of development, you may want to create your own perspective. To do this use the Window pull-down menu and choose Save Perspective As . . . supplying your own perspective name. Once you have done this you can now make use of the Reset Perspective option discussed above to bring back any views that you may have closed accidentally.