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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 have 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 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.