1.1 Glossary

This document uses the following terms:

American National Standards Institute (ANSI) character set: A character set defined by a code page approved by the American National Standards Institute (ANSI). The term "ANSI" as used to signify Windows code pages is a historical reference and a misnomer that persists in the Windows community. The source of this misnomer stems from the fact that the Windows code page 1252 was originally based on an ANSI draft, which became International Organization for Standardization (ISO) Standard 8859-1 [ISO/IEC-8859-1]. In Windows, the ANSI character set can be any of the following code pages: 1252, 1250, 1251, 1253, 1254, 1255, 1256, 1257, 1258, 874, 932, 936, 949, or 950. For example, "ANSI application" is usually a reference to a non-Unicode or code-page-based application. Therefore, "ANSI character set" is often misused to refer to one of the character sets defined by a Windows code page that can be used as an active system code page; for example, character sets defined by code page 1252 or character sets defined by code page 950. Windows is now based on Unicode, so the use of ANSI character sets is strongly discouraged unless they are used to interoperate with legacy applications or legacy data.

ASCII: The American Standard Code for Information Interchange (ASCII) is an 8-bit character-encoding scheme based on the English alphabet. ASCII codes represent text in computers, communications equipment, and other devices that work with text. ASCII refers to a single 8-bit ASCII character or an array of 8-bit ASCII characters with the high bit of each character set to zero.

big-endian: Multiple-byte values that are byte-ordered with the most significant byte stored in the memory location with the lowest address.

bitmap: A collection of structures that contain a representation of a graphical image, a logical palette, dimensions and other information.

client: Synonym for client computer.

clipboard: A program provided by the operating system that enables local data transfer between applications by using the cut, copy, and paste operations.

clipboard format: An unsigned integer that uniquely identifies the format of a data packet that is stored in a binary large object (BLOB) and can be shared between processes through the operating system clipboard or other means.

clipbook: Clipboard data that is stored separately from the system clipboard.

color plane: One of the dimensions of a color space.

device-independent bitmap (DIB): A file format that was designed to help ensure that bitmap graphics that were created by using one application can be loaded and displayed in another application exactly as they appeared in the originating application.

Dynamic Data Exchange (DDE): An inter-process communication method that is featured in Windows. DDE allows two or more applications that are running simultaneously to exchange data and commands.

enhanced metafile format (EMF): A file format that supports the device-independent definitions of images.

intensity: The magnitude of a component color in the color space.

little-endian: Multiple-byte values that are byte-ordered with the least significant byte stored in the memory location with the lowest address.

logical palette: A palette that defines colors as device-independent values. Unlike the system palette, which has predefined, device-specific color definitions, a logical palette contains color values that can be defined entirely by an application. A logical palette entry is mapped to the system palette entry in order for the custom colors to appear when the application is run.

mapping mode: The way in which logical (device-independent) coordinates are mapped to device space (device-specific) coordinates. It also specifies the orientation of the axes and size of the units used for drawing operations.

metafile: A sequence of record structures that store an image in an application-independent format. Metafile records contain drawing commands, object definitions, and configuration settings. When a metafile is processed, the stored image can be rendered on a display, output to a printer or plotter, stored in memory, or saved to a file or stream.

METAFILEPICT: A structure that defines the metafile picture format. METAFILEPICT is used for exchanging metafile data through the clipboard. See [MSDN-METAFILEPICT] and [MSDN-CLIPFORM] for further information.

NetBIOS: A particular network transport that is part of the LAN Manager protocol suite. NetBIOS uses a broadcast communication style that was applicable to early segmented local area networks. A protocol family including name resolution, datagram, and connection services. For more information, see [RFC1001] and [RFC1002].

network dynamic data Exchange (NetDDE): A technology that allows applications using dynamic data exchange (DDE) to transparently share data over a network.

palette: An array of values, each element of which contains the definition of a color. The color elements in a palette are often indexed so that clients can refer to the colors, each of which can occupy 24 bits or more, by a number that requires less storage space.

server: A computer on which the remote procedure call (RPC) server is executing.

system palette: The palette that is actually in use to reproduce colors on a device such as a computer screen. A system palette has predefined, device-specific colors that are used by default, so that individual applications do not have to set them up.

Tag Image File Format (TIFF): A format for bitmapped image data that comes from scanners, frame grabbers, and photo-retouching applications. It supports the exchange of image data between applications, taking advantage of the varying capabilities of imaging devices. TIFF supports a number of compression schemes that allow the choice of the best space or time tradeoff for applications. For more information see [RFC3302] and [TIFF].

Unicode: A character encoding standard developed by the Unicode Consortium that represents almost all of the written languages of the world. The Unicode standard [UNICODE5.0.0/2007] provides three forms (UTF-8, UTF-16, and UTF-32) and seven schemes (UTF-8, UTF-16, UTF-16 BE, UTF-16 LE, UTF-32, UTF-32 LE, and UTF-32 BE).

Windows metafile format (WMF): A file format used by Windows that supports the definition of images, including a format for clip art in word-processing documents.

MAY, SHOULD, MUST, SHOULD NOT, MUST NOT: These terms (in all caps) are used as defined in [RFC2119]. All statements of optional behavior use either MAY, SHOULD, or SHOULD NOT.