PawPrint.net Glossary of Terms

A simple, very flexible text format derived from SGML (ISO 8879). Originally designed to meet the challenges of large-scale electronic publishing, XML is also playing an increasingly important role in the exchange of a wide variety of data on the Web and elsewhere.

A generic name for various kinds of dynamic random access memory: DRAM that are synchronized with the clock speed that the microprocessor is optimized for. This tends to increase the number of instructions that the processor can perform in a given time. The speed of SDRAM is rated in MHz rather than in nanoseconds (ns). This makes it easier to compare the bus speed and the RAM chip speed. You can convert the RAM clock speed to nanoseconds by dividing the chip speed into 1 billion ns (which is on...

Abbreviation of Printer Control Language, the Page Description Language (PDL) developed by Hewlett Packard and used in many of their laser and ink-jet printers. PCL 5 and later versions support a scalable font technology called Intellifont.

RAM is a type of computer storage whose contents can be accessed in any order. This is in contrast to sequential memory devices such as magnetic tapes, discs and drums, in which the mechanical movement of the storage medium forces the computer to access data in a fixed order. It is usually implied that RAM can be both written to and read from, in contrast to read-only memory or ROM.

Computers use RAM to hold the program code and data during execution. In the first electronic computers, RAM wa...

A compressed graphic format suited for flat color images (illustrations) and drawings. It compresses images by referencing areas of the same colour thus it is less suitable then JPEG for photographic images (where there are colour gradients)

Originally created by CompuServ it was the subject of proposed law suits and patent discussions which have largely been dropped.

In 1991, the NCSA introduced NCSA Mosaic, the first readily-available graphical Web Browser that vitrually kickstarted the dot.com revolution. It may not look like much now - but it is interesting to consider how similar modern browsers look to the original.