D Glossary

 

A

active column

The horizontal location on the paper where the next

 

character will print.

active line

The vertical location on the paper where the next

 

character will print.

active position

The position on the paper where the next character will

 

print. The intersection of the active column and the active

 

line.

ASCII

Abbrev. for American Standard Code for Information

 

Interchange. A standard character encoding scheme

 

introduced in 1963 and used widely on many computers

 

and printers. It is a 7-bit code with 128 different bit

 

patterns. There is no parity recommendation.

attributes, print

Operations performed on text that alter its appearance

 

but do not change the font. Examples: underlining,

 

superscripting, bold, etc.

 

B

bar code

A printed code consisting of parallel bars of varied width

 

and spacing and designed to be read by a one-

 

dimensional scanning device.

baud

A unit of speed that measures the rate at which

 

information is transferred. Baud rate is the reciprocal of

 

the length in seconds of the shortest pulse used to carry

 

data. For example, a system in which the shortest pulse

 

is 1/1200 second operates at 1200 baud. On RS-232

 

serial lines, the baud rate equals the data flow rate in bits

 

per second (bps). To communicate properly, a printer

 

must be configured to operate at the same baud rate as

 

its host computer.

bold

A print attribute specifying text of a heavy line thickness.

 

See also character weight.

buffer

A reserved area in memory where data is written and

 

read during data transfers.

bus

A circuit for the transfer of data or electrical signals

 

between two devices.

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Compaq P5000 Series setup guide Glossary, Ascii