Help understanding fundamentals of linuxcnc

PCW wrote:

I think you have two types of jogging mixed up.

gmoccapy can jog with a screen button/arrow like most GUis

This is quite different than using an external encoder

You are right, I seem to have them mixed up. 

After some more reading, I might have cleared up some of the confusion regarding the basic concept of linuxcnc(hopefully).

Linuxcnc, or more specifically HAL and hal-pins are based on abstractions of real world hardware. So what you are doing on Linuxcnc is making a "virtual PCB", and soldering "virtual" connections between the hal-pins with net commands.

(This is a simplification).
For instance. Lets say you want to make a X-button that makes a stepper motor move, and that stepper motor is connected to a Mesa board.
1)That X-button pin Outputs Bit type(True of false), based on if it is pressed or not
2)Mesa Board has an input pin that accepts Bit type.
3)Then you connect the X-button pin with Mesa Board input pin with "net command" i.e(fictional example):
net x-btn-move x.button-pin => Mesa.Board-pin
4) You don't necessarily need to know how the Mesa Board communicates with the stepper motor, you just need to know that X-button-pin has to be connected to Mesa-board-pin, in order for the stepper motor to move.

Is this thought process correct?