See the online man pages. At unix shell prompt type 'man vim' and 'man gvim'.
Or inside the gvim session type :help to get the help page. See also Vim Tutorial To see the settings type :set all or :set. To see list of options type :options. To see topics on set type :help set.
VIM - main help file
Move around: Use the cursor keys, or "h" to go left,
"j" to go down, "k" to go up, "l" to go right.
":1" takes you to 1st line of page
":n" takes you to nth line of page
"<SHIFT>g" takes you to bottom of page
":/someword/ will search for "someword" in doc
Close this window: Use ":q<Enter>".
Jump to a subject: Position the cursor on a tag between |bars| and hit CTRL-].
With the mouse: ":set mouse=a" to enable the mouse (in xterm or GUI).
Double-click the left mouse button on a tag between |bars|.
jump back: Type CTRL-T or CTRL-O.
Get specific help: It is possible to go directly to whatever you want help
on, by giving an argument to the ":help" command |:help|.
It is possible to further specify the context:
WHAT PREPEND EXAMPLE ~
Normal mode commands (nothing) :help x
Visual mode commands v_ :help v_u
Insert mode commands i_ :help i_<Esc>
command-line commands : :help :quit
command-line editing c_ :help c_<Del>
Vim command arguments - :help -r
options ' :help 'textwidth'
list of documentation files:
|howto.txt| how to do the most common things
|intro.txt| introduction to Vim
|index.txt| alphabetical index for each mode
|autocmd.txt| automatically executing commands on an event
|change.txt| delete and replace text