“W3C” to “WWW”

W3C

(n.) World Wide Web Consortium. (Use sparingly.)

WAIS

(n.) Wide Area Information Server.

wait

(n.) A UNIX® command that waits for all background processes to complete, and reports their termination status.

wait state

(n.) A condition whereby a microprocessor awaits the arrival of data.

WAN

Seewide area network.

watermark

(n.) In STREAMS, a limit value that is used in flow control. Each queue has a high watermark and a low watermark. The high watermark value indicates the upper limit that is related to the number of bytes which are contained on the queue. When the queued character reaches its high watermark, STREAMS causes blocking of another queue that attempts to send a message to this queue. When the characters in this queue are reduced to the low watermark value, the other queue is unblocked by STREAMS.

WBEM

(n.) Web-Based Enterprise Management.

WC

See world coordinates.

web browser

(n.) An application that enables the user to view, navigate through, and interact with HTML documents and applets. Also called browser.

WebTone

(n.) The Sun term for the 21st-century Internet equivalent to the dialtone. WebTone facilitates information flow across devices, from smart cards to supercomputers.

WID

(n.) Window ID.

wide area network

(WAN) (n.) A network which consists of many systems that provide file transfer services. This network can cover a large physical area, sometimes worldwide.

wide character

(n.) A data type with a fixed number of bytes in which a character from any supported character set is stored. Interpretation of a wide character is usually locale dependent. ANSI-C uses a data type that is called wchar_t as the name of the data type.

widget

(n.) In a window system, a reusable user interface component such as a button, scrollbar, control area, or text edit area. When an X Toolkit Intrinsics function creates a widget, it is returned as an opaque data handle and is assigned to a which is called a widget identifier. See also OLIT.

widget class

(n.) The widget's type. Class defines the resource set for instances of that class of widgets.

widget class hierarchy

(n.) The hierarchy of widget superclasses and subclasses.

widget instance

(n.) A value for the resource set that is defined by the corresponding widget class.

widget set

(n.) A family of widgets that are used together to produce a unified user interface.

wildcard

(n.) A metacharacter that represents a range of ordinary characters. An example is the shell's use of * and ?.

window

(n.) See dialog box, palette window, plain window, primary window, secondary window, utility window.

window control

(n.) A control that affects the state of a window. An example is the Maximize button in a title bar.

window frame

(n.) The visible part of a window that surrounds a software application. A window frame can contain a maximum of five controls: title bar, resize borders, minimize button, maximize button, and the Window menu button.

window gravity

(n.) In the X protocol, a capability that automatically repositions resized windows to an edge, corner, or center of the window. See also bit gravity.

window icon

(n.) A minimized window.

window list

(n.) A window element that presents a list of all the open windows that are associated with the window from which the action was selected.

window management

(n.) A set of functions with which you can control the layout and state of windows on the screen. The agent that implements these functions is called the “window manager.” The functions include moving, resizing, opening, closing, raising, lowering, and quitting windows.

Window menu

(n.) The menu that is displayed when you choose the Window menu button. The menu choices enable you to manipulate the location or size of the window, such as Move, Size, Minimize, and Maximize.

Window menu button

(n.) The control at the upper left corner of a window, next to the title bar. Choosing the Window menu button displays the Window menu.

window raster

(n.) In computer graphics, a raster object that designates a rectangular area on the display device screen.

window system

(n.) A system that provides you with a multiuse environment on the display device. Separate windows are similar to separate displays on the monitor screen. Each window can run its own application. You open some number of windows for various applications, and the window system handles the communications between each of the applications and the hardware.

wireframe model

(n.) A graphical object with edges that are created by line segments. Because it is wholly transparent, the object's hidden lines are visible (unless you use an algorithm to remove them). Such an object can be drawn quickly because no surfaces need to be rendered or highlighted. However, in a complex 3-D drawing (a car engine, for example), it might be difficult for the viewer to make visual sense of the drawing.

word

(n.) A character string of 8 bits, 16 bits, 32 bits, or 64 bits. The SPARCstation^TM system uses a 32-bit word. An UltraSPARC^TM workstation uses a 64-bit word.

wordwrap

(n.) The automatic continuation of text from the end of one line to the beginning of the next line.

work area

(n.) The part of a window where controls and text are displayed.

working directory

(n.) The directory in which the user's commands occur if no other directory is specified.

Workshop for Implementors of OSI (OIW)

(n.) The North American regional forum at which Open Systems Interconnection (OSI) implementation agreements are decided. OIW is equivalent to EWOS in Europe and AOW in the Pacific. Also called NIST OIW or the NIST Workshop.

workspace

(1) (n.) The current screen display, the icons and windows it contains, and the unoccupied screen area where you can place objects.

(2) (n.) A specially designated (but standard) directory and its subdirectory hierarchy. Usually, each developer on a project works in his or her own isolated workspace concurrently with other developers who are programming in other workspaces.

workspace background

(n.) The portion of the display with no windows, icons, or objects.

Workspace Manager

(n.) The software application that controls the size, placement, and operation of windows within multiple workspaces. The Workspace Manager includes the front panel, the window frames that surround each application, and the Window and Workspace menus.

Workspace menu

(n.) The menu that is displayed by pointing at an unoccupied area of the workspace and clicking a mouse button.

workspace object

(n.) An object that has been copied from the file manager to the workspace.

workspace switch

(n.) A control that enables you to select one workspace from among several workspaces.

world coordinates

(WC) (n.) The coordinate system which is scaled so that user-defined objects can be represented in units appropriate to the application, such as inches, meters, and miles. Each object in a picture is first described in its own model coordinates, and all model coordinates are then mapped into world coordinates.

world-readable files

(n.) The files on a file system that can be viewed (read) by any user. For example: files that reside on Web servers can only be viewed by Internet users if their permissions have been set to world readable.

World Wide Web

(WWW) (n.) The web of systems and the data in them that is the Internet. See also uniform resource locator.

wrapper

(n.) An object that encapsulates and delegates to another object to alter its interface or behavior in some way.

wrapping

(n.) On the SBus, the process—during burst transfers—by which the burst can begin at an arbitrary word boundary within the block, with the address incremented by 4, modulo the size of the burst in bytes.

write

(1) (v.) To place text in a file.

(2) (v.) To use the write command to communicate with other users.

write-protect

(v.) To restrict writing in a file to authorized users or programs.

write queue

(n.) A message queue in a module or driver that contains messages which are moving downstream. A write queue is associated with the write(2) system call and output from a user process.

write side

(n.) See downstream. Also called output side.

WSDL

(n.) Web Services Description Language.

WTT

(n.) “Thai input/output methods for computer” standard.

WWW

See World Wide Web. See also uniform resource locator.