How to create the " [PATCH 0/5]" first email?

["Philip Oakley" <philipoakley@iee.org>]

The git format-patch allows numbered patches to be created, however I'm
not sure how folk generate the initial "0/n" patch. Which of the various
options should I be using?

Also, being on windows, the various 'mbox' and 'MUA' discussions are new
to me, so the format-patch step where :-

"Typically it will be placed in a MUA’s drafts folder, edited to add
timely commentary that should not go in the changelog after the three
dashes, and then sent as a message whose body, in our example, starts
with "arch/arm config files were…". On the receiving end, readers can
save interesting patches in a UNIX mailbox and apply them with
git-am(1)."

hides a multitude of implicit knowledge steps. Is there an extended
description of what that would mean from a platform independent
viewpoint? e.g. if the patches are separte files and an mbox is one
consolidated file, how to get from one to the other so that 'it' can be
sent by 'git send-mail'.

I'm also missing an understanding of the preparation stage where one
tries to tidy up the various commit messages becaue they weren't
explicit, specfic nor concise enough, so I suspect that there is an
implicit `git format-patch` <-> `git am` loop of sharpening the mbox
patches before submission to the list that I'm missing. Has this 
described somewhere?

Philip Oakley