Glossary

administrator

The person who can use the most privileged account, root. This person must have his or her own personal login account for daily use, but, when there are serious system problems to correct, the person logs in to the root account to change system information using the graphical tools or using the IRIX shell.

The administrator has all the capabilities of a privileged user, plus the capability to change information in the root account (such as the password) and to log into an IRIX shell as root. Because there is only one root account, there is only one administrator per system. The Information Panel for a particular system includes the name of the system's administrator so other users know who to contact for help.

ASCII text

An ASCII file contains text only. When you save a file as ASCII text, you save only the characters, not the size, the font, the style, the color, or the format.

bits per pixel

8-bit color uses 8 bits to describe the intensity of each color channel. If a pixel is composed of Red, Green and Blue (RGB) with 8 bits per color (3 color channels), you have 24-bit color. 16 bits per color channel results in 48-bit color (again, for a pixel with 3 color channels).

default printer

The printer to which the system directs a print request if you do not specify a printer when you make the request. You set the default printer using the Printer Manager.

default scanner

The scanner from which gscan automatically scans images unless you specify a different scanner. You set the default scanner using the Scanner Manager.

driver

Software that lets a peripheral like a printer or scanner interact with your workstation or server.

generic printer

A generic printer is one that does not have drivers for Impressario software. You can set only a few basic printing options for generic printers.

icon catalog

A window that contains pages for groups of your applications. To see your icon catalog, choose “Applications” from the Find toolchest. Figure 1-1 shows a sample icon catalog. Figure 1-2 shows a sample toolchest.

image source

The location of the image that you want to scan. The image can be located in a scanner, in an image file, or on another system's screen.

impressario printer

A printer that has pre-installed drivers in the Impressario software. These drivers let you access all of the printer's capabilities.

launch icon

An arrow-shaped icon that appears in the left margin of the IRIS InSight viewer and the Help viewer. Double-click this icon to run an application.

local system

The workstation which you are currently using.

peripheral

A hardware device that adds more functionality to the basic workstation, such as a tape drive.

PPD

Abbreviation for PostScript Printer Description. PPD files are human-readable text files that describe the features of a specific PostScript capable printer. A PPD file describes printer features in such a way that a graphical user interface (GUI) can be built to present the user with a list of printer features to choose from. Impressario includes a PPD based driver. See the ppd(1M) reference page for details.

prescan

To scan an image at a very low resolution and display it in gscan's window. You use the prescanned image to view and crop the image before scanning the final image.

print server

A workstation or server that accepts and spools print jobs for a printer. The printer is usually directly connected to the print server.

queue

A list of print jobs waiting to be printed on a particular printer. Also the space on a system that spools the print jobs. Double-click a printer's icon to see its queue. Use the Printer Manager to add a printer and set options for its queue.

remote system, drive, disk, file system, or printer

A hardware device or the information or media it contains that you can access across the network; they are not physically connected to your workstation.

resolution

The number of dots per inch (dpi) that an image contains. Screen resolution is the number of pixels per inch that the screen can use to display an image. Printer resolution is the number of dots of ink per inch that the printer can print. Scanner resolution is the number of dots per inch of the image that the scanner can recognize. In general, if the printing or scanning resolution is too low, image quality will suffer.

scanning destination

The location to which gscan should send the final scanned image. It can place the image in an image file, display it on another system's screen, or send the image directly to a printer.

server

A system that other systems on the network access to use its disk space, software, or services.

supported printers

Impressario software has drivers for its supported printers. See also impressario printer.

supported scanners

Impressario software has drivers for its supported scanners that let you access all of the scanners features.

toolchest

The toolchest is found on your desktop. Use its menus to access various desktop tools. See Figure 1-2 for a sample toolchest.