M-x describe-bindings - List of all keybindings for the current mode
M-x describe-mode - Information about the current major mode
M-x apropos - Search for info on subject
Emacs is the self describing editor!
Emacs is self-documenting, yes, but its help system (much like the rest of it!) seems to be designed for experienced users who can't quite remember the syntax for font-lock-keywords* , rather than new users who trying to figure out how to switch buffers or what "font-lock" even is. It's awesome once you get it, but using a help system to answer questions about basics shouldn't assume experience.
* http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/FontLockKeywords
The tutorial does help, though.
The only "intuitive" interface is the nipple. After that, it's all learned.
No, not really. Babies need to learn to latch properly or it hurts the mother.
Google.
It's often pleasantly surprised that some task I thought was esoteric is actually solved in the standard emacs libs, but the fact that I had to go to Google to find it doesn't say great things about the editor's discoverability. IMO, Emacs is about as discoverable as a dynamic programming language with a decent interactive interpreter such as ipython or irb.
I'm not saying it's the wrong tradeoff -- but if you want to learn Emacs you probably should read a book or two and ideally spend some time with a master. You really can't just bring it up and figure out that M-q will conveniently re-wrap the current paragraph or that M-^ joins the current line to the previous line and removes intermediate whitespace.
C-h (Type ? for further options)
Type ? and you get a list.
From the tut:
To use the Help features, type the C-h character, and then a character saying what kind of help you want. If you are REALLY lost, type C-h ? and Emacs will tell you what kinds of help it can give. If you have typed C-h and decide you do not want any help, just type C-g to cancel it.
There are hundreds emacs commands. The fact that description for any command can be found through help doesn't mean that you've discovered them all after spending 30 minutes reading the Emacs Tutorial.
That is how pivo found it. By going "oh, I wonder what else is there" and hitting C-h ?
If you're not the type of person that does stuff like that, emacs probably isn't the editor for you. Hell, software development probably isn't for you.
Yeah, emacs is large - and has lots of features. Once you've been through the tut, and spent a few days with the editor, they're quite discoverable. It does make the assumption that you want to discover though.
That was my next guess! Drat!
Seriously though, what does "apropos" mean? In Common Lisp I always have to stop and remember it whenever I need to search packages for a symbol. A dictionary defines it as "by way of interjection or further comment", which isn't really meaningful. Maybe the name is a historical artifact?
In this case you're asking about things related to the search terms. It mirrors the Unix command that performs searches on man pages.