Emacs provides an extensive online help system for helping you learn about various aspects of using Emacs. Emacspeak provides online help for its various extensions using this same help system. This chapter explains how to use the online help facilities in order to empower you in discovering powerful and versatile working techniques that will make you more and more productive in your day to day computing.
The online help options are accessed via the C-h prefix key, which must be followed by an
additional letter or control character to designate the kind of
help desired. For example, C-h t
help-with-tutorial visits the Emacs
tutorial in a new buffer; C-h i
info enters the Info documentation
system, from which you can read Texinfo manuals that have been
installed on your system, including the Emacs and Emacspeak
documentation; and C-h k describe-key provides a description of the Emacs
function which is bound to the next key that you type. For
learning about the various options that are available via the
C-h mechanism described above, view the
online help for command help-for-help
bound to C-h C-h — using what has been
described so far, you would achieve this by pressing
C-h k followed by C-h
C-h.
Emacspeak users should note that online help is typically
displayed in a separate Emacs window. Where it makes sense to
do so, Emacspeak will automatically speak the displayed help.
Once you’ve asked for help, you can hear the displayed
documentation as many times as you wish using Emacspeak command
emacspeak-speak-help bound to
C-e h. If you want to move through the
displayed help a line at a time, switch to the buffer where the
help is displayed — the buffer is called *Help*.
Often, in adding an auditory interface to an Emacs extension, such as a web browser or mail reader, Emacspeak defines additional commands and key bindings which enhance the functionality of the spoken feedback provided by the application. This manual does not purport to document all such commands. It is important, therefore, when learning to use the various Emacs extensions which comprise the ‘audio desktop’ (see The Emacspeak Audio Desktop.) that you take advantage of online help to obtain details of any context-specific features provided by Emacspeak. The following two commands are of particular importance in this regard:
describe-mode explains which major and minor
modes are currently in effect, and lists the commands and key
bindings associated with them.describe-bindings lists all of the key bindings
which are currently defined.The importance of these help functions can be illustrated by
the Emacs/W3 web browser. When point is positioned inside a
table, certain key bindings are established with which you can
access Emacspeak commands that make it possible to read the
rows and columns of the table and explore its structure
efficiently. To get a description of these key bindings, you
can use W3 to visit the sample HTML file supplied as part
of the Emacspeak distribution, and, after having moved point
onto the first row of the table, issue the command C-h m describe-mode to
create a help buffer containing an explanation of the features
offered by W3 mode.
Emacspeak supplements the online help facilities available within Emacs by defining several commands of its own, as follows:
describe-emacspeak presents a list of standard
Emacspeak commands.emacspeak-view-emacspeak-faq opens a new buffer
containing the Emacspeak FAQ, a
list of frequently asked questions about Emacspeak together
with their answers.emacspeak-learn-mode enters a mode in which the
function of every key that you type is spoken; this mode can
be terminated with the C-g
keyboard-quit command.