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Eclipse IDE COBOL Outline View Support

The Outline view provides a structured representation of the file for the user.
In the Eclipse IDE the outline view can be accessed by selecting the menu option "Window/Show View/Other.../General".
Elastic COBOL supports the outline view representation for COBOL programs and their copy files. 
                           Fig (1).
The elements represented in the outline view are the various DIVISION's, the sub SECTION's within them
and the paragraph/section/entry names within the procedure division. The FILE CONTROL and FILE SECTION parts of the
program will show the various files used in the program. Finally copy files included in the program either as part of the COPY
statement or an EXEC include will also be shown in the view.
Paragraph/Section/Entry/Copy names will have a P,S, E or C preceding the name to identify the type of the element.
The tree in the outline view is a representation of the nesting level of the various programs within the source file as shown in Fig 2.
For example prog2 and prog2b are at the same level whereas prog2 contains prog2a which in turn contains prog2a1.
                                                                  Fig(2).
The primary use of the outline view is to represent the program in a simplistic format and allow the user to navigate to the
various elements within the program/copy file. Selecting an element in the view will scroll the editor to the corresponding line.
In order to open a copy file shown in the outline view, either select the element within the copybook or double on the copybook element itself 
to open the copy file. 
The elements within an expanded copybook are shown in red color to indicate that they are part of a nested copybook.
The outline view is built using information that is output during compilation of the COBOL program.
This information is output only when the compilation occurs within the Eclipse IDE.
If the file being compiled is contained within the projects of the open workspace then the ".omap" is stored in the intermediate_java_code directory of the corresponding project else it is stored in the same directory as the file itself.
For example "proga.cbl" would output "proga.cbl.omap".
When you open the file with the COBOL editor, this ".omap" file is used to extract information to be shown in the view.
Note that the compiler creates the output ".omap" file if only there are any elements that need to be displayed.
For e.g. a copy file that contains only working storage variables would not output any elements and hence the compiler would
not output the "omap" file. The outline view auto updates itself when the source file gets saved/compiled. 
Hence a modified source file that has not been compiled will not show updated information in the outline view. 

 

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