PawPrint.net Glossary of Terms

It usually consists of a metallic conductor pattern on an organic insulating substrate, more complex circuits have several layers stacked togeather. After assembly where components are added, it is known as a printed wiring assembly (PWA).  

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...

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.

An address referring to a document on the Internet. This can be used to reference a web page via HTTP or a file to be accessed via FTP, for example. The reason for a URL (rather then just the address) is to define completely what a computer must do, and where it must go, to access a document (sometimes even on it´s local hard drive in the case of ´file:´)

The syntax of a URL consists of four elements:

Protocol://address/path/document - here are a few examples:

http://www.pawprint.net/in...

The opening of a lens that admits light. Except in very simple cameras, the Aperture can be varied in size by an adjustable  diaphragm, which regulates the amount of light passing through the lens. The relative Aperture is measured as the focal length of the lens divided by the diameter of the Aperture; this is expressed as an f-number: f/3, f/5, and so on.

Aperature has a dramatic effect on the Depth-of-field of the photograph.

Hypertext Markup Language is the Markup-Language that evolved as the basis for layout of web-pages. It is a derivitive of the first SGML languages and has since been superceeded by derivitives of XML refertred to as XHTML.