What information does the bottom bar in emacs convey? [duplicate]

Question

This question already has an answer here:

Emacs statusbar documentation (1 answer)

Closed 8 years ago.

I've started using emacs recently and am liking it. I've noticed that it always has this bottom area displaying some information about the buffer I have open. A normal appearence might be:

--:--- bufferName All L3 (modebeingviewedin?)------------------------------------

I've noticed the 6 first symbols seem to have something to do with the permissions of the file, and weather or not it has been edited. Other than the buffername I'm not certain how to read any of this bottom line.

What is this thing called? Minibuffer(I thought that was the M-x command prompt)?

What are these sections for/can someone provide a link to more info?

Thanks

Answer 1

My question is a duplicate, though I didn't know that at the time of posting.

The area is called the "Mode Line" The link provided by PP:

http://gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_mono/emacs.html#Mode-Line

provides the current link to a thorough explanation about the the mode. (the duplicate question had an out of date answer, which I noticed PP also commented on)

I found a more concise explanation here, http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/ModeLine