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Is there a way to get a quick help for a certain package? Something similar you get when you click package description in Paradox. I think it would be interesting a sort of doc package which get the list of your installed packages and fetch the Readmefile of the related Github pages. For example if you get the description of package, say Helm, using the describe-package command you get a very brief description:

helm is an installed package.

 Status: Installed in `~/.emacs.d/elpa/helm-20160824.745/' (unsigned).
Archive: n/a
Version: 20160824.745
Requires: emacs-24.3, async-1.9, popup-0.5.3, helm-core-2.0
Summary: Helm is an Emacs incremental and narrowing framework
Homepage: https://emacs-helm.github.io/helm/
Other versions: 20160824.745 (melpa), 2.0 (melpa-stable).

Instead it could be really useful to fetch the Readme and convert to an org file in order have a quick look for the most important commands.

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    There isn't one universally accepted way of documenting a package. Instead there's info manuals, external documentation, bundled documentation, READMEs, commentary inside the file, etc.
    – wasamasa
    Aug 29, 2016 at 17:46

2 Answers 2

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The command you are looking for is describe-package?

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  • This command is mentioned in the question, along with an example of its output.
    – phils
    Aug 29, 2016 at 22:23
  • @phils Indeed, but it was not at the time this "answer" was posted.
    – JeanPierre
    Aug 30, 2016 at 9:30
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If you are looking for the interactive commands, there is always C-h b, which will tell you all of the active keybindings available for current major and minor modes. Search for the mode you are looking for withC-s. Documentation for each function is linked to as well.

I use this for exploring features of a mode, as most of the time the function names are self-explanatory, or it gives me more information to web search or use aproposto find additional pieces of documentation.

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