Compaq P5000 Series - Manual (Page 165)

165
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.