PUBLISHING

A
Acronym
An acronym is a shortened version of a
phrase, often based on the first letter of
each word. For example, WYSIWYG is
the acronym for ‘What You See Is What
You Get’. Some acronyms use more than
one letter from each word (or omit some
words), for example EPUB is an acronym
for Electronic PUBlication.
Amazon
A well-known online retailer of various
goods, including print books and ebooks.
Amazon also produces the Kindle e-reader
devices.
Anchor
An anchor is a specific location within a
HTML web page or other hypertext document
that can be jumped to, for example
by clicking on a hyperlink.
Android
Google’s operating system for mobile
phones and tablets, based on the Linux
kernel and the Java programming language.
Android is currently the most widely
used operating system for mobile devices
(including smartphones and tablets).
Animated GIF
A graphic file format consisting of two
or more image frames shown as moving
images in a timed sequence; most often
used for endlessly looping mini-films or
graphic animations that only last a few
seconds. (GIF is an acroym for Graphics
Interchange Format.)
App store
An online store where applications may be
bought or obtained for free. Every major
mobile operating system also has its own
app store: App Store (Apple), Google Play,
Amazon Appstore, Windows Phone Store
and BlackBerry World.
Application or app
See Software. The word ‘app’ was originally
a marketing term invented by Apple
to win over resistance against installing
third-party software on the iPhone.
Nowadays, the word is most commonly
used for (usually relatively small) software
applications running on mobile or desktop
operating systems and which are downloaded
and installed from an app store.
Application Programming Interface
(API)
A standardized way for software applications
to communicate with each other
and use each other’s resources. APIs are
used in software development; end users
normally do not see them.
ASCII
American Standard Code for Information
Interchange: the standard encoding
format for plain-text files in English since
1963. ASCII is limited to 128 characters
and therefore excludes diacritic (accented)
characters and non-European
writing systems. For written text, ASCII has
therefore been superseded by Unicode
(which can store characters of practically
every writing system). ASCII text remains
the standard format for programming and
markup languages. See also Unicode.
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