108 lines
4.2 KiB
ReStructuredText
108 lines
4.2 KiB
ReStructuredText
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========
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Glossary
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========
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.. glossary::
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"Everything but the kitchen sink"
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An English idiom meaning to include nearly everything that you can
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think of.
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API version
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Version that is meant for computer consumption. This version is
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parsable and comparable by computers. It contains information about
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a library's API so that computer software can decide whether it works
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with the software.
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ASCII
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A character encoding that maps numbers to characters essential to
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American English. It maps 128 characters using 7bits.
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.. seealso:: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ASCII
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ASCII compatible
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An encoding in which the particular byte that maps to a character in
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the :term:`ASCII` character set is only used to map to that character.
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This excludes EBDIC based encodings and many multi-byte fixed and
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variable width encodings since they reuse the bytes that make up the
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:term:`ASCII` encoding for other purposes. :term:`UTF-8` is notable
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as a variable width encoding that is :term:`ASCII` compatible.
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.. seealso::
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Variable-width_encoding
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For another explanation of various ways bytes are mapped to
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characters in a possibly incompatible manner.
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code points
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:term:`code point`
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code point
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A number that maps to a particular abstract character. Code points
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make it so that we have a number pointing to a character without
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worrying about implementation details of how those numbers are stored
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for the computer to read. Encodings define how the code points map to
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particular sequences of bytes on disk and in memory.
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control characters
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:term:`control character`
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control character
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The set of characters in unicode that are used, not to display glyphs
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on the screen, but to tell the display in program to do something.
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.. seealso:: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Control_character
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grapheme
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characters or pieces of characters that you might write on a page to
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make words, sentences, or other pieces of text.
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.. seealso:: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grapheme
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I18N
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I18N is an abbreviation for internationalization. It's often used to
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signify the need to translate words, number and date formats, and
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other pieces of data in a computer program so that it will work well
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for people who speak another language than yourself.
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message catalogs
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:term:`message catalog`
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message catalog
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Message catalogs contain translations for user-visible strings that
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are present in your code. Normally, you need to mark the strings to
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be translated by wrapping them in one of several :mod:`gettext`
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functions. The function serves two purposes:
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1. It allows automated tools to find which strings are supposed to be
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extracted for translation.
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2. The functions perform the translation when the program is running.
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.. seealso::
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`babel's documentation
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<http://babel.edgewall.org/wiki/Documentation/messages.html>`_
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for one method of extracting message catalogs from source
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code.
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Murphy's Law
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"Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong."
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.. seealso:: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murphy%27s_Law
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release version
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Version that is meant for human consumption. This version is easy for
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a human to look at to decide how a particular version relates to other
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versions of the software.
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textual width
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The amount of horizontal space a character takes up on a monospaced
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screen. The units are number of character cells or columns that it
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takes the place of.
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UTF-8
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A character encoding that maps all unicode :term:`code points` to a sequence
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of bytes. It is compatible with :term:`ASCII`. It uses a variable
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number of bytes to encode all of unicode. ASCII characters take one
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byte. Characters from other parts of unicode take two to four bytes.
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It is widespread as an encoding on the internet and in Linux.
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