PUBLISHING

C
Cascading Style Sheets (CSS)
Cascading Style Sheets are a markup language
for formatting electronic text with
typographical attributes (such as bold,
italic, font type, font size, color, margins,
etc.). CSS is most commonly used for
(HTML) web pages, and by extension also
for EPUB. CSS is typically stored in a separate
file so that the content and the visual
layout of a document remain separated
from each other. Cascading Style Sheets
make it easy to design a typographic
template for a whole website or ebook. In
order to change the typography, one only
needs to edit the CSS file. Also, by using
different CSS files for the same document,
it also is easy to define formattings for different
purposes without having to modify
the document itself.
Compatibility
Pieces of hardware and/or software which
work together are called compatible.
Conversely, if they do not work together,
they are incompatible. For example, Android
and iOS are incompatible because
Android apps do not work under iOS and
vice versa.
Compressed files
Compression is a technique for shrinking
the size of a file or a data stream. As a
result it can be transmitted faster, and will
take up less storage space on a device.
For example, digital video is heavily
compressed, otherwise it would not fit on
a DVD and could not be streamed over
internet connections. Another example
is EPUB, which consists of a compressed
collection of HTML files. Various software
applications such as PKZIP, WinZip, 7zip,
Stuffit, GNU gzip/tar, and many others,
can compress a set of files into single-file
archives, and decompress the archive
back to separate files. Files with the
following extensions are almost always
compressed file collections: epub, tar.gz/
tgz, rar and zip.
Content Management System (CMS)
Software that makes it possible to publish
and manage content (text, images, etc.)
on a website without having to manually
create HTML files. For example, practically
all blogs and all shopping websites are
based on content management systems.
Most content management systems use
internal databases to store their information
(such as blog articles or sales items).
Content management systems automatically
generate a web page ‘on the fly’ from
their database contents when the page is
requested by a user. See also Server-side
scripting.
D
Data
In the context of computing, data is simply
any kind of information that is stored
and processed on a computing device.
Generally a distinction is made between
data and software: software processes
data, and conversely data is processed by
software (for example: a graphics software
application for manipulating an image). A
computer or mobile device is, in the end,
simply a machine that uses software to
process data. See also Software.
131