The CLHS, or Common Lisp HyperSpec, is one of the most important resource for any Common Lisp developer. It is derived from the official Common Lisp standard, and contains documentation for every aspect of the language.

While it is currently made available online by LispWorks, it can be useful to be able to access it locally, for example when you do not have any internet connection available.

For this purpose, LispWorks provides an archive which can be downloaded and browsed offline.

While the HyperSpec is valuable on its own, the SLIME Emacs mode provides various functions to make it even more useful.

I have found the following functions particularily useful:

slime-documentation-lookup , or C-c C-d h to browse the documentation associated with a symbol.

, or to browse the documentation associated with a symbol. common-lisp-hyperspec-format , or C-c C-d ~ , to lookup format control characters.

, or , to lookup control characters. common-lisp-hyperspec-glossary-term , or C-c C-d g , to access terms in the glossary.

With the default configuration, Emacs will use the online HyperSpec. You can have it use a local copy by setting common-lisp-hyperspec-root to a file URI. For example, if you downloaded the content of the CLHS archive to ~/common-lisp/ :

( setq common-lisp-hyperspec-root ( concat "file://" ( expand-file-name "~/common-lisp/HyperSpec/" )))

And if you configure Emacs to use the EWW web browser, you can work with the CLHS without leaving your editor.