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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.Next: Emacs Packages., Previous: Voice Lock, Up: Emacspeak [Contents][Index]