mh-e: Using This Manual
4 Using This Manual
*******************
This chapter begins the meat of the manual which goes into more detail
about every MH-E command and option.
There are many commands, but don’t get intimidated. There are
command summaries at the beginning of each chapter. In case you have or
would like to rebind the keys, the command summaries also list the
associated Emacs Lisp function. Furthermore, even if you’re stranded on
a desert island with a laptop and are without your manuals, you can get
a summary of all these commands with GNU Emacs built-in help: use ‘C-h
m’ (‘describe-mode’) for a brief summary of commands, ‘?’ (‘mh-help’)
for an even briefer summary(1) (‘C-c ?’ in MH-Letter mode), or ‘C-h i’
to read this manual via Info. The built-in help is quite good; try
running ‘C-h C-h’. This brings up a list of available help topics, one
of which displays the documentation for a given key (like ‘C-h k C-n’).
Another useful help feature is to view the manual section that describes
a given key (such as ‘C-h K i’). In addition, review 
Conventions, if any of the GNU Emacs conventions are strange to you.
In addition to all of the commands, it is also possible to
reconfigure MH-E to fit the needs of even the most demanding user. The
following chapters also describe all of the options, show the defaults,
and make recommendations for customization.
However, when customizing your mail environment, first try to change
what you want in MH, and only change MH-E if changing MH is not
possible. That way you will get the same behavior inside and outside
GNU Emacs. Note that MH-E does not provide hooks for customizations
that can be done in MH; this omission is intentional.
I hope I’ve included enough examples here to get you well on your
way. If you want to explore Emacs Lisp further, a programming manual
does exist, (2) and you can look at the code itself for examples. Look
in the Emacs Lisp directory on your system (such as
‘/usr/local/share/emacs/lisp/mh-e’) and find all the ‘mh-*.el’ files
there. When calling MH-E and other Emacs Lisp functions directly from
Emacs Lisp code, you’ll need to know the correct arguments. Use the
built-in help for this. For example, try ‘C-h f mh-execute-commands
<RET>’. If you write your own functions, please do not prefix your
symbols (variables and functions) with ‘mh-’. This prefix is reserved
for the MH-E package. To avoid conflicts with existing MH-E symbols,
use a prefix like ‘my-’ or your initials. (Unless, of course, your
initials happen to be _mh_!)
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