The Echo Area
=============

The "echo area" is a one line window which appears at the bottom of the
screen.  It is used to display informative or error messages, and to
read lines of input from you when that is necessary.  Almost all of the
commands available in the echo area are identical to their Emacs
counterparts, so please refer to that documentation for greater depth of
discussion on the concepts of editing a line of text.  The following
table briefly lists the commands that are available while input is being
read in the echo area:

`C-f' (`echo-area-forward')
     Move forward a character.

`C-b' (`echo-area-backward')
     Move backward a character.

`C-a' (`echo-area-beg-of-line')
     Move to the start of the input line.

`C-e' (`echo-area-end-of-line')
     Move to the end of the input line.

`M-f' (`echo-area-forward-word')
     Move forward a word.

`M-b' (`echo-area-backward-word')
     Move backward a word.

`C-d' (`echo-area-delete')
     Delete the character under the cursor.

`DEL' (`echo-area-rubout')
     Delete the character behind the cursor.

`C-g' (`echo-area-abort')
     Cancel or quit the current operation.  If completion is being read,
     `C-g' discards the text of the input line which does not match any
     completion.  If the input line is empty, `C-g' aborts the calling
     function.

`RET' (`echo-area-newline')
     Accept (or forces completion of) the current input line.

`C-q' (`echo-area-quoted-insert')
     Insert the next character verbatim.  This is how you can insert
     control characters into a search string, for example.

PRINTING CHARACTER (`echo-area-insert')
     Insert the character.

`M-TAB' (`echo-area-tab-insert')
     Insert a TAB character.

`C-t' (`echo-area-transpose-chars')
     Transpose the characters at the cursor.

The next group of commands deal with "killing", and "yanking" text.
For an in depth discussion of killing and yanking, *note Killing and
Deleting: (emacs)Killing.

`M-d' (`echo-area-kill-word')
     Kill the word following the cursor.

`M-DEL' (`echo-area-backward-kill-word')
     Kill the word preceding the cursor.

`C-k' (`echo-area-kill-line')
     Kill the text from the cursor to the end of the line.

`C-x DEL' (`echo-area-backward-kill-line')
     Kill the text from the cursor to the beginning of the line.

`C-y' (`echo-area-yank')
     Yank back the contents of the last kill.

`M-y' (`echo-area-yank-pop')
     Yank back a previous kill, removing the last yanked text first.

Sometimes when reading input in the echo area, the command that needed
input will only accept one of a list of several choices.  The choices
represent the "possible completions", and you must respond with one of
them.  Since there are a limited number of responses you can make, Info
allows you to abbreviate what you type, only typing as much of the
response as is necessary to uniquely identify it.  In addition, you can
request Info to fill in as much of the response as is possible; this is
called "completion".

The following commands are available when completing in the echo area:

`TAB' (`echo-area-complete')
`SPC'
     Insert as much of a completion as is possible.

`?' (`echo-area-possible-completions')
     Display a window containing a list of the possible completions of
     what you have typed so far.  For example, if the available choices
     are:

          bar
          foliate
          food
          forget

     and you have typed an `f', followed by `?', the possible
     completions would contain:

          foliate
          food
          forget

     i.e., all of the choices which begin with `f'.  Pressing <SPC> or
     <TAB> would result in `fo' appearing in the echo area, since all
     of the choices which begin with `f' continue with `o'.  Now,
     typing `l' followed by `TAB' results in `foliate' appearing in the
     echo area, since that is the only choice which begins with `fol'.

`ESC C-v' (`echo-area-scroll-completions-window')
     Scroll the completions window, if that is visible, or the "other"
     window if not.