11.5 Help Mode Commands

Help buffers provide the same commands as View mode (see Misc File Ops), plus a few special commands of their own.

<SPC>

Scroll forward.

<DEL>

Scroll backward.

<RET>

Follow a cross reference at point.

<TAB>

Move point forward to the next cross reference.

S-<TAB>

Move point back to the previous cross reference.

Mouse-1

Mouse-2

Follow a cross reference that you click on.

C-c C-c

Show all documentation about the symbol at point.

When a function name (see Running Commands by Name), variable name (see Variables), or face name (see Faces) appears in the documentation, it normally appears inside paired single-quotes. To view the documentation of that command, variable or face, you can click on the name with Mouse-1 or Mouse-2, or move point there and type <RET>. Use C-c C-b to retrace your steps.

You can follow cross references to URLs (web pages) also. This uses the browse-url command to view the page in the browser you choose. See Browse-URL.

There are convenient commands to move point to cross references in the help text. <TAB> (help-next-ref) moves point down to the next cross reference. S-<TAB> moves up to the previous cross reference (help-previous-ref).

To view all documentation about any symbol name that appears in the text, move point to the symbol name and type C-c C-c (help-follow-symbol). This shows all available documentation about the symbol as a variable, function and/or face. As above, use C-c C-b to retrace your steps.