11.7 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>

<BS>

Scroll backward. On some keyboards, this key is known as <BS> or <backspace>.

<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.

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

You can follow cross references to URLs (web pages) as well. When you follow a cross reference that is a URL, the browse-url command is used to view the web page in a browser of your choosing. See Browse-URL.

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