Alphanumeric | A mixture of letters and numbers – often used in passwords. |
Applications programme (program) | Programmes which carry out a particular task such as word processing packages, databases and spreadsheets. |
ASCII | American Standard Code for Information Interchange. A standard way of assigning numerical codes to characters and control codes. |
Background printing | Printing which takes place whilst allowing the computer to carry out another task. |
Bar codes | Printed codes made from vertical lines of different thickness used for fast error free data entry. |
Baud Rate
| A measure of the speed of data transmission used by serial communications between printer and computer.ÃÂ When setting up a serial interface the baud rate settings on the computer and printer must be the same. |
Bidirectional printing | Printing in which the print head goes from left to right only on every other line – on other lines it does from right to left. This increases the speed of printing as the head prints in both directions. |
Binary | The base 2 number system which uses only the two digits 0 and 1. |
Bit | A Binary digit – the smallest numeric unit used by printers and computers. |
bps | Bits per second – a measure of the speed of data communications. |
Buffer | An area within the electronics of the printers in which data, sent from the computer, is stored before it is printed.ÃÂ Also known as printer memory. |
Byte | A group of eight bits, which together make a unit which can be used to represent a character of number. |
CMYK | Colour printing based around cyan, magenta, yellow and black. |
Condensed printing | Printing in which each character is narrower than normal – useful for fitting wide tables or spreadsheets onto the paper. |
Configure | To prepare a piece of equipment or a programme so that it will work with other software or equipment. |
cpi | Characters per inch. |
cps | Characters per second |
Daisy wheel printer | A type of letter quality printer that uses a round removable print head made from a spoked disk with a pre-formed character at the end of each spoke (daisywheel) |
Default | Settings that take effect when equipment is turned on. |
Desktop publishing | Using a computer to format pages of text and graphics rather than doing the same job manually with paste and scissors. |
Dot matrix printer | A printer which creates characters from patterns of dots.ÃÂ Usually used to refer to serial impact and ink-jet printers although laser printers are also dot matrix printers. |
DOS | Disk Operating System |
dpi | Dots per inch |
Expansion board | A type of circuit board which allows the user to fit extra memory. |
Impact printer | A type of printer which forms characters by the impact of pins or pre-formed characters through a ribbon on to the paper. |
Ink jet printer | A type of dot matrix printer which forms characters by squirting tiny drops of ink onto the paper. |
Interface | The electrical connection between the printer and the computer – usually serial or parallel. |
Jumper | A moveable connection between two parts of an electrical circuit. |
Justify | To print text with even left and right margins – each line of text is the same length. |
Kb | Kilobyte.ÃÂ 1024 bytes |
Laser printer | A non-impact page printer which uses both laser and electronic copying technology.ÃÂ Laser light is used to create an image on a photosensitive drum which then attracts toner powder;ÃÂ the toner is then deposited onto the paper and fixed in place by heat. |
LCD | Liquid Crystal Display.ÃÂ A visual display where each character is formed from segments which darken when a current is passed through. |
Line printer | A printer which prints an entire line of characters as one unit. |
Macro | A method of storing groups of settings that can be executed with a single key press. |
Mb | Megabyte. 1,048,576 bytes or 1024 Kb |
OCR | Optical character recognition.ÃÂ Recognising characters from a scanned document and converting them into a digital form suitable for use within a computer. |
Operating system | The programme which controls the flow of data in a computer and its peripherals. |
ppm | Pages per minute.ÃÂ A measure of how fast a printer can print each page. |
Parallel Interface | A type of interface that allows parallel transmission of data when a number of bits, usually a byte, are transmitted at the same time. |
Parity | A technique for detecting errors in data sent to the printer via a serial interface. |
Peripheral | Any device such as a printer or display connected to a computer. |
Pixel | Smallest displayed unit of a bit-mapped image. |
RGB | Red, Green, Blue |
Serial printer | A printer that prints one character at a time. |
Spooling | Temporary storage of data from a computer before sending to a printer. |
WYSIWYG | What You See Is What You Get. The ability of some applications programmes to provide an accurate screen representation of the text that will be printed. |