[R] Some more help needed...

[v.demart@libero.it]

As an absolute beginner, still reading  "Modern Applied Statistics with S" and exercising with its examples, I'm frequently stopped by what it looks to be R poor help system (or is it my gigantic ignorance?). I mean that using help many arguments of a command seems to be given for granted like for instance:
...............................
?lines
 lines(x, ...)

     ## Default S3 method:
     lines(x, y = NULL, type = "l", col = par("col"),
           lty = par("lty"), ...)

Arguments:

    x, y: coordinate vectors of points to join.

    type: character indicating the type of plotting; actually any of
          the 'type's as in 'plot'.

     col: color to use. This can be vector of length greater than one,
          but only the first value will be used.

     lty: line type to use.

     ...: Further graphical parameters (see 'par') may also be supplied
          as arguments, particularly, line type, 'lty' and line width,
          'lwd'.
................................

How could I quickly know during an R-session what values should be "col" set to have red, how could I set "lty" etc.?

Vittorio