emacs terminology

The first emacs versions appeared in 1976, in a world quite different from the current, in particular when it comes to computing. For this reason, emacs uses a lot of terminology that is a bit foreign for people who learned computers in later years. This presents a challenge when trying emacs itself, or its extensive documentation. Here, I try to list the emacs terminology and the 'translation' in current computer terms. I expect to be continually updating this.

As with much of what is in this blog, for just about everything a footnote could be added with some exception/alternative explanation/..., but I will resist the urge to do so.

The following picture shows some of the important concepts to keep in mind... especially when reading emacs documentation. Of course, many of the visual details depend on your color settings, operating system, emacs-version and so on...

The following table is another way to help you understand the emacs jargon:

emacs terminology	common terminology
buffer	document/workspace
evaluate expressions	interpret/execute some code
font locking	syntax highlighting
filling	line wrapping
frame	window
kill	cut
mark	beginning of the selected area
mode line	status bar
point	cursor position
region	selected area; the area between 'mark' and 'point'
visit a file	open a file
window	window pane
yank	paste