Mac "Terms" For The New User



Here is a site with a wealth of good information about Mac terminology for
the beginner and intermediate level Mac User, that has been kind of "tucked
away" on the Net for some time. I have edited and displayed some examples of
what you may expect from this site (their URL address is in the body of the
message).:

Netscape: Mactionary: The Macintosh dictionary for the rest of us!
http://www.maccom.net/mactionary.shtml
Wednesday, April 15, 1998

Mactionary is MacCom's Macintosh dictionary for the rest of us! Each month,
MacCom explains Macintosh/computer terms in the "Say What" section of the
publication. Mactionary is a compilation of these Macintosh and common
computer terms. If you have a term you'd like for us to explain, e-mail it
to maccom@maccom.net and we'll try our best to explain it. As each monthly
issue is sent out, more terms will be added to this Macintosh dictionary.
Mactionary is not be used for any other purpose (besides personal) without
permission from MacCom Publications.

anti-aliasing - A technique used for enhancing the appearance of icons (or
other images) by smoothing angular or curved lines. It accomplishes this by
coloring pixels on jagged edges. application heap - Area of memory set aside
for user programs.

ASCII - An acronym for American Standard
Code for Information Interchange and it is an international standard in
which numbers, letters, punctuation marks, symbols, and control codes are
assigned numbers from 0 to 127. ASCII is a plain, unadorned text without
style or font specifications and is easily transferred over networks. This
type of text is used in e-mail and some programs allow you to save your
files in this format.

backup - Copy of installed application software or of data files you've
created and also the act of copying these files to another disk. It is a
very good idea to backup for computer files every once in awhile so that you
will always have extra copies of your installed software, files, etc...

baud - A unit of speed in data transmission or the maximum speed at which
data can be sent down a channel. Baud is often equivalent to bits per second
and was named after J. M. E. Baudot who died in 1903.

cache - A small, fast memory that holds recently-accessed data. It is
designed to speed up subsequent access to the same data and may be located
on the same integrated circuit as the
CPU, in order to further reduce the access time.
When data is read from or written to main memory, a copy is also saved in
the cache (along with the associated main memory address). If the cache sees
that the requested data is in the cache, it is immediately returned but if
not, then it is accessed from main memory which takes longer. Web browsers
also use cache for frequently visited sites.

CGI (Common Gateway Interface) - A standard for running external programs
from a World Wide Web HTTP server. Usually, the program will generate some
HTML which will be passed back to the browser, such as form processes and
database searches.

code - Set of machine symbols that represent data or instructions. Also used
when writing programs.

computer - Programmable machine that accepts, processes, and displays data.

desk accessory (DA) - A handy program you can select while running another
program, such as Apple's Chooser, Alarm Clock, and Calculator.
Some games and other programs can also be desk accessories.
disk image - An electronic representation of an individual disk. A disk
image can contain an installer (such as how Apple distributes some of their
programs over the Internet) and it has the characteristics of a separate
disk after being mounted (for example, when you move files from or to the
disk image, it has to copy them). To unmount a disk image, you simply drag
it to the Trash.

dump - Printout of the contents of memory or a file.

fat binary - An executable file containing code for more than one CPU. The
correct code is selected automatically at run-time. This is convenient for
distributing software and sharing it between multiple platforms. Mac OS
supports fat binaries for both 680x0 and PowerPC native code
.
GUI (Graphical User Interface) - Refers to the front-end of software meant
to provide an attractive and easy to use interface between the computer user
and application. For example, Mac OS has a GUI but DOS does not.

HFS+ - Also known as the Mac OS Extended format, HFS+ is an improved volume
format that literally saves hard drive space. Unlike the Mac
OS Standard format, it allows minimum file sizes to be more consistent with
the actual amount of information being stored. This new format is included
with Mac OS 8.1 and provides much more data storage efficiency. However, to
take advantage of it, you must backup your data, reformat the drive in
Extended format, then restore data (however, in the long run it may be worth
it).

Internet - Network of computer networks involving millions of "surfers"
(Internet users).

MacBinary II (sometimes simply referred to as MacBinary) - A format for
representing all the information of a Macintosh file in one binary file.
It is useful for storing a Macintosh file on a non-Macintosh system for
later retrieval. Unlike BinHex, MacBinary II is a compact format but can not
be passed through most electronic mail systems. MacBinary II files typically
have a suffix of ".bin" and are smaller files for downloading, but aren't as
compatible as BinHex.

MIME (Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions) - A standard for multi-part,
multimedia e-mail messages and world wide web hypertext documents on the
Internet. MIME provides the ability to transfer non-textual data, such as
graphics, audio, video, and voice.

mirror - Writing duplicate data to more than one device (usually two hard
drives), in order to protect against loss of data in the event of device
failure. Mirror sites are used on the Internet as well.

multitasking - Multithreaded multitasking is new to the Finder in Mac OS 8.
It allows you to perform a number of tasks, like duplicating folders,
copying files, opening files, and launching applications, simultaneously in
the background.

Portable Digital Documents (PDD) -
QuickDraw GX provides document portability that is independent of fonts,
applications, and output devices. The users of your application can create
and save their results in the form of a portable digital document or PDD.
These files (ending in .pdf) provide all of the necessary information to
view and print the document, including fonts that are used and other
information necessary to render the text and graphics.

protected memory - A nice feature that will be included in Apple's Rhapsody.
It ensures that if one application crashes, it won't bring down your entire
system. Each application will have its own memory area to run in and it
won't get in another application's memory space. This will prevent entire
system crashes and make the Mac run smoother.

proxy server - The process of providing a cache of items available on other
servers. When the server receives a request, it looks for the
URL in its local cache. It it finds it, the document is returned
immediately. However, if not, it gets it from the remote server, saves a
copy in cache, and then returns it to the requester.

RAM (Random Access Memory) - The memory that stores the program you are
running and documents you create. The RAM drive forgets all stored data when
the computer is turned off.

Read Only Memory (ROM) - Type of data storage device which is manufactured
with fixed contents. In its most general sense, the term might be used for
any storage system whose contents cannot be altered, including several
types, such as CD-ROMs. ROM is inherently non-volatile storage because it
retains its contents even when the power is switched off, so it is often
used to hold programs for embedded systems since these usually have a fixed
purpose.

refresh - Repeating the display or storage of data to keep it from fading or
becoming lost (monitor and RAM are constantly being refreshed).

suitcase file - Suitcase files have icons that look like suitcases. They can
contain more than one font, size, and style.

Symmetric Multiprocessing (SMP) - Two or more similar processors that are
managed by one operating system, where each processor has equal access to
I/O devices. This is different from the parallel processor front-end type.
With programs that take advantage of SMP (i.e. Photoshop), they are able to
run on any or perhaps all processors in the system, interchangeably, at the
operating system's discretion. Apple's Rhapsody will incorporate SMP.
system heap - An area of memory in the system partition reserved for use by
the operating system.

Trojan Horse - A malicious, security-breaking program that appears to be
something useful, such as a game, but does something destructive to your
computer behind your back (such as erase your hard drive).
user-friendly - Easy to learn and use.

VRAM (Video Random Access Memory) -
Fast memory that is designed for storing the image to be displayed on a
computer's monitor. VRAM must be fast enough to supply data to the display
electronics at the speed at which the screen is scanned.

V-Twin - An information access toolkit (now known as the Apple Information
Access Toolkit) developed by Apple Research Labs. V-Twin provides
applications with the ability to index, store, and search text. Eventually,
Apple believes that V-Twin will enable a new generation of "content-aware"
applications.

word processor - Text creation and editing program or system that allows
electronic writing and correcting of documents.
All product and service names are property of their respective holder. You
can perform a search on Mactionary by using the search form box on the
sidebar (to your left).
.................................................................................

If there are any new Mac Users out there that would like additional sites to
help them discover the "wonders" of using the Macintosh...please feel free
to post me a message, email me at: macmedic@bellsouth.net or call at:
407-695-4455..and I will send along additional references for you to pursue.

All the "Mac" best to you.
Steven Christian
MacMedics


                                 Password:

  ------------------------------------------------------------------------