Glossary and ReferenceIndex

Reference material on this platform serves two different needs: a reader who wants one term defined precisely, and a reader who wants to understand the vocabulary well enough to read everything else in this wiki without stumbling. Both needs live here — general computing concepts defined in plain language, the full platform glossary, orientation for a reader who hasn't picked a starting point yet, and the standards this wiki itself is written to.

Start here: PointSav encyclopedia — glossary and lexicon — the canonical A-to-Z definition of every platform-specific term, the page most other articles link to on first use.

Platform orientation

• Getting started with the PointSav platform — what the platform is, who it's for, and where to go first
• PointSav encyclopedia — glossary and lexicon — the canonical term-by-term definition source
• How this knowledge base is organized — a reader's map of all fifteen documentation-wiki areas
• Developer guide index — every how-to guide, grouped by developer concern
• Hardware reference — reference hardware profiles for workstations and fleet devices
• SLM operationalization plan — the plan for moving from external model calls to a per-tenant local model

General computing concepts

• Application programming interface — how software systems communicate through a defined set of calls
• Computer appliance — hardware and software sealed together for one well-defined function
• Edge computing — placing computation near the data it operates on, rather than in a central data center
• Fog computing — the layer of compute and storage between edge devices and the cloud
• Just enough operating system — reducing the OS to only what a specific application needs
• Lightweight linux distribution — Linux builds engineered for far less RAM and CPU than a full distribution
• Virtual appliance — a pre-configured VM image combining a minimal OS with one application
• Security through obscurity — why secrecy of design is not treated as a security mechanism here
• User experience design — the discipline covering every aspect of a user's interaction with a product
• User interface design — designing the human-machine interface itself, governed by ISO 9241

Editorial and publishing standards

• Editorial language registers — the three prose registers this wiki writes in, matched to audience
• Editorial philosophy — why every article teaches understanding rather than just retrieving facts
• News release typography and layout standards — formatting rules for corporate news syndication
• Preprint notice — what the mandatory notice on a working research paper actually means
• Root files discipline — the canonical, enumerated set of files every repository root keeps
• Structural positioning — how this platform differentiates without naming competitors
• Wiki provider landscape — a structural audit of why no existing provider has closed Wikipedia's gap

For a specific term, go to the glossary directly. Architectural terms are defined with their subject, not listed here.

See also

• How It's Built — where architectural terms are defined in context, not just listed
• Building Blocks — the reusable mechanisms this wiki's vocabulary describes
• How You Run It — procedural guides that assume this vocabulary