As you have probably realised, buffers are probably the most important part of the editor. Each file that is being edited must be stored in a buffer. They are not restricted to editing files though, all buffers are regarded as simply being a list of lines which can be displayed in a window and modified as needed.
This means that they are very flexible, for example, the Lisp debugger uses a buffer for its user interface, the Info reader uses two buffers -- one to display the current node, the other to store the file's tag table (never displayed, just used to look up the position of nodes).
Each buffer has a name, generally buffers which contain proper files use the base part of the filename, while buffers which don't correspond to files use a word which starts and ends with asterisks (i.e. `*jade*').
Each window can display one buffer at any one time. There is no restriction on the number of windows which may display the same buffer at once.
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