11.5 Help Mode Commands

Help buffers provide the same commands as View mode (see section Miscellaneous File Operations), 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 section Running Commands by Name), variable name (see section Variables), or face name (see section Using Multiple Typefaces) 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 section Following URLs.

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.