Acronym collection

Purpose: Collection and explanation of abbreviations, acronyms, and other shortcuts mentioned and used in the Tcler's Wiki or in c.l.t. One useful site of which I am aware is http://www.ucc.ie/info/net/acronyms/acro.html

which is a World Wide Web Acronym and Abbreviation server. See also http://www.acronymfinder.com/

. Also see the glossary of terms in case what you are seeking is not an acryonm at all. Another resource I've seen referenced was http://mindprod.com/jgloss.html

, which, while labeled the Java glossary, contains information on terms other than strictly Java.

The Unix Acronym List, a collection of Unix and related acronyms, can be found at http://www.roesler-ac.de/wolfram/acro/

Since 1993 there is V.E.R.A. - in english: Virtual Entity of Relevant Acronyms [1]; or the original german: Verzeichnis EDV-Relevanter Akronyme [2].

See also the Category Glossary.

AATCHUDUH — Any Abuse That Can Happen Usually Does Ultimately Happen
ACID - Atomicity, Consistency, Isolation, Durability - the four touchstones for transaction management in a concurrent database.
ADSI - Active Desktop Services Interface
AFAIK - As Far As I Know
afk - away from keyboard
AIUI - As I Understand It
AKA - Also Known As (AKA a.k.a.)
ANSI - American National Standards Institute
API - Application Programming Interface - a formal 'contract' detailing the arguments a function or program accepts and the actions it will take upon receiving those arguments
ARE - Advanced Regular Expression
ASAP (BNS) - As soon (at least once recently I saw this for "simple") as possible (But no sooner)
ASCII - American Standard Code for Information Interchange
BBL - Be Back Later
BC(C) - ByteCode (Compilation), the way that the Tcl interpreter squeezes extra speed from Tcl scripts. See also The anatomy of a bytecoded command.
BI - Batteries Included; a (to date mythical) Tcl distribution which would provide an integrated build and install environment for commonly used extensions
BLT - in some parts of the USA and the UK, a Bacon, Lettuce, and Tomato sandwich, but apparently the Tcl/Tk extension by this name does not mean this. The author (see [3]) once wrote that the reader could just give the letters any meaning they so desired. The most official-sounding form known to-date is Bell Labs Toolkit though that is only hearsay...
BNF - Backus-Naur Form. A way of describing most modern computer languages in terms of a tree of non-terminal and terminal tokens. Tcl is unusual in that it is not defined this way...
BOF - Birds of a Feather, informal meeting of Tcl users on and around a certain topic, at conventions
brb - be right back
BSOD - blue screen of death, one Microsoft way of indicating that something went very wrong. Contact your distributor or system administrator.
BTW - by the way
CBL - Common Business Language
CDF - Channel Definition Language
CDMA - Code Division Multiple Access
CfV (also CFV) - Call for Votes
CGI - Common Gateway Interface
CLI - Command Line Interface - the sort of interface typically provided by the Unix shell or an MS-DOS prompt. Easy to implement using tclsh. Note that almost all text editors (including both emacs and vi) are not CLI programs in normal use, but rather CUI programs. Also called TUI for text-mode user interface.
c.l.t. - news:comp.lang.tcl (aka clt)
c.l.t.a. - news:comp.lang.tcl.announce (aka clta)
CML - Chemical Markup Language
COM - Common Object Model. Microsoft's standard for discoverable objects and single-machine IPC.
CORBA - Common ORB Architecture. Language- and platform-independent scheme for object-based RPC. Highly standardized scheme [4][5] for letting objects implemented in virtually any language on virtually any major platform (UNIX, Windows, VMS, MVS, etc.) talk to other objects possibly written in different languages and located on different machines. Sort-of similar to the combination of COM, COM+ and DCOM with some extra features and others missing...
CR - Carriage Return (in TTY days, to return the printing element to the left hand column of the page) - AKA the standard Mac OS character used to separate lines in a text file: \r or ASCII 13 - See also CRLF, LF, and NL
CRLF - Carriage Return Line Feed - AKA the standard Windows text file line termination: \r\n or ASCII 13, 10
CRUD - Create, Retrieve, Update, Delete (or Create, Report, Update, Delete)
CSS - Cascading Style Sheets
CTCP - Client To Client Protocol, defined within IRC
CUA - Common User Access (maybe?) - A set of user interface guidelines developed by IBM that formed the basis of both the Motif and Windows style-guides. Although it has many faults (including requiring that all interfaces be capable of management completely from the keyboard) it is still quite a good standard and should only be ignored outright if you are keen on annoying users.
CUI - Character User Interface - interface which requires a grid-of-characters oriented device. See Ctk [6] or SCO's VTcl for two examples of Tcl CUI extensions.
CVS - Concurrent Versions System
DBMS - DataBase Management System
DEC - Digital Equipment Corporation
DND - Drag aNd Drop (e.g., see DND support) or Do Not Disturb
DNS - Domain Name Service (e.g. see Tnm/Scotty/TkInEd.) Sometimes mistakenly called Dynamic Name Service.
DOM - Document Object Model
DOS - Disk Operating System
DoS - Denial of Service (attack.) There are many kinds of ways to make a program, and particularly a program that offers services over the internet, fail to provide the advertised service. Some involve actively replacing the content or making the server pass on confidential data to untrusted third parties, but the hardest to stop is the vandal's approach; to make the service unavailable to anyone, which is known for obious reasons as a DoS attack. Blocking these attacks is extremely difficult, especially since resources have to be limited anyway (there is only so much matter in the universe! :^) and software may have a perfectly legitimate reason for requesting many resources.
[DSS] - DataSet Server
DSSSL - Document Style Semantics and Specification Language
DTD - Document Type Definition
DTP - to the world at large, Desktop Publishing
DWIM - Do What I Mean... One of two ops required of a minimal instruction set. I think the other op is nop.
e.g. - for example (from Latin exempli gratia)
EDI - Electronic Data Interchange
EIA - evolution in action
EIAS - Everything Is A String: The principle guiding the semantics (but not necessary constituting the implementation) of values in Tcl.
EMS - Element management system
Eolas - Embedded Objects Linked Across Systems (also the Gaelic word for "knowledge")
ETA - Estimated Time of Arrival
etc. - and so on (from Latin et cetera, sometimes written as &c. which makes sense if you know the typographic history of the symbol.)
ETLA - Extended Three Letter Acronym
ETEN - Exhaustive Tcl Extension Network
ETFS - Edit the F* Source, the basic configuration system (see RTFM)
FAQ - Frequently Asked Questions [7]
f.e. - for example
FFT - Fast Fourier Transform
FRQ - Feature Request - a function of http://sf.net/ projects (and perhaps others) whereby a user can submit a request for some functionality to be added to a program or extension.
FSF - Free Software Foundation - see http://www.fsf.org/ for details of their political and technical agenda.
FSM - Finite State Machine Automata in Tcl
FTP - File Transfer Protocol
FTS - full-text search, a particular advantage of SQLite
ftpd - FTP daemon (a process that provides an ftp service on a host machine)
FUD - Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt (the classic marketing technique of IBM back in the bad-old days...now practiced by Microsoft [8])
FWIW - For What It's Worth
FYI - For Your Information
GIF - Graphic Interchange Format
GIYF - Google Is Your Friend
GPL - GNU Public License
GTFG - Go search The Friendly Google (a sibling suggestion to RTFM or RTFS).
gtg - got to go
GUI - Graphical User Interface (the primary use for Tcl extensions such as Tk) - usually now represented as a raster (grid of pixels) display in concert with a keyboard and a pointing-device (mouse, touchpad or trackball.) Typically implemented as a WIMP UI though the UIs used in, for example, air traffic control are also GUIs though they are not WIMP UIs in any sense.
HDML - Handheld Device Markup Language - modified version of HTML designed to provide support for small displays and unique input devices.
HL7 - Health Level Seven [9] Application Level (OSI 7) messaging for medical applications.
HTML - Hyper Text Markup Language
HTH - Hope This (or That) Helps
HTTP - Hyper Text Transfer Protocol
i18n - internationalization (that's an i followed by 18 characters followed by an n)
IANAL - I Am Not A Lawyer (IOW, if you take what I am saying as legal advice, you are more foolish than I look...)
IBM - International Business Machines
ICMP - Internet Control Message Protocol - Used for inquiring about accessability of hosts (through ping) and routing (through traceroute) but since it is also used to configure those things, it is a very dangerous protocol in "mortal" hands. Tcl does not support this protocol, and I would be very surprised if many (any?) extensions do either due to security concerns (opening an ICMP connection is a very highly priviledged operation. See Tnm/Scotty/TkInEd)
i.e. - that is (from Latin id est)
IDE - Integrated Development Environment (see What features would be useful in a Tcl IDE)
IIJMOISFST - Is It Just Me Or Is SourceForge Slow Today?
IIOP - Internet Inter-ORB Protocol. So that ORB can talk to ORB and make CORBA calls across them.
IIRC - If I Remember Correctly
IMAP - Internet Mail Access Protocol.
IME - In my experience
IME - Input Method Editor, a tool for assisting in the input of complex native alphabets.
IMO - In My Opinion
IMHO - In My Humble Opinion
IMNSHO - In My Not-So-Humble Opinion
IOU - I Owe You
IOW - In Other Words
IPC - Inter-Process Communication
ISO - In Search Of (some product, resource, etc.); also International Organization for Standardization (http://www.iso.org/); also common slang for iso9660 cdrom image file.
ISTR - I seem to remember/recall
itcl - incr Tcl [10]
itk - incr Tk [11]. Use in the Tcl community does not refer to the insomniac's tookit, which does not use Tcl at all.
iwidgets - incr Widgets [12]
JPG - aka JPEG (from Joint Photographic Experts Group, who defined the format), a potentially lossless graphic file format. (EKB I thought JPEG does lossy compression. GIF is lossless, but is optimized for images with flat areas of color, and does poorly with photos. TIFF is a standard lossless file format for photographic images.)
JRMP - Java Remote Method Protocol, how Java talks over the wire when doing RMI (JRMP is to IIOP as RMI is to CORBA, and virtually nobody needs to know anything about it.)
K3WL - Cool, from the same twisted mind that brought you l337...
KISS - Keep It Simple, Stupid (or, more polite: Sir!) or another version: Keep It Small and Simple!
l10n - Localisation (following i18n above, 'l' 10 chars 'n')
lee7 - elite (sometimes also written l337 for reasons unknown to me.)
l8r - later (phonetically l+eight+r) - sometimes written as c.u.l8r or cul8r (see you later).
LALR(1) - Look Ahead Left Right parser with one token look-ahead. Variant of LR(1) implemented in YACC, Bison, etc.
LF - Line Feed (in the old TTY days, caused the print head element to move down one line, but NOT to move to the left hand side of the page) - This is the standard text file line separator used on Unix systems: \n or ASCII 10
LL(k) - Style of parser that takes an input language (typically in modified BNF) and can recognise it with a fixed (user-specified) number of tokens at any point (usually, but not always, one.) Prefers right-recursive definitions as they can be expressed without recursion. This is the style of parser implemented in JavaCC, etc.
LR(1) - Style of parser that takes an input language (typically in modified BNF) and can recognise it with at most one token's worth of look-ahead. Prefers left-recursive definitions as it works with a stack of tokens already seen.
LISP - List Processing language
lol - laugh (laughing, laughed, laughs) out loud. See emoticons.
LP - on the Tcler's Wiki chatroom, one of the emoticons used to convey going for coffee.
MathML - Mathematical Markup Language
MIME - Multimedia(?) Internet Mail Extensions. Scheme for passing data other than plain old text through RFC822-compliant messages. Something of a mixed blessing...
MS - MicroSoft
MS-DOS - MicroSoft's Disk Operating System
MSN - Microsoft Network , the internet provider
MULE - Maximum Use License for Everyone, lightweight open-source software license
NDA - A Non-Disclosure Agreement, is a legal contract between at least two parties that outlines confidential materials or knowledge the parties wish to share with one another for certain purposes, but wish to restrict access to. [13]
NFS - Network File System. A way of sharing files over a network that works (fairly) well with Unix systems. Though it can be set up in a peer-to-peer fashion, client-server is far more common due to reduced administration costs (it makes little difference to clients which way it is done unless they need very fast access or very high reliability.) There are other networked FS schemes (including SMB and AFS) but NFS is still in there in a lot of installations...
NHFI - No Hard Feelings Intended.
NIH - Not Invented Here ... an expression an attitude where some person or group re-invents the wheel regarding some technology simply because they don't trust some other group to do things right or do not care to collaborate on the technology.
NIST - National Institute of Standards and Technology
NL - Newline. Same as LF.
NNTP - Network News Transfer Protocol. The basis of USENET as implemented over the Internet.
NMS - Network Management System
NRE - Non-Recursive Engine
NTP - Network Time Protocol (see Tnm/Scotty/TkInEd)
OFX - Open Financial Exchange
OP - Original Poster (seen on comp.lang.tcl)
ORB - Object Request Broker. Core of CORBA, and library that implements it.
OSD - Open Software Distribution
OSS - Open Source Software. (Of course, there is still much argument over what exactly this means... :^)
OTB - One True Brace (style)
OTOH - On The Other Hand
PBI - Partly Baked Idea
PEBCAK - Problem Exists Between Chair And Keyboard (please change users!)
PHB - Pointy Hair Boss (for an explanation of this, read http://www.dilbert.com/ on a regular basis)
PIA/PITA/RPITA - (Real) Pain In (the) A**
PKB Pot. Kettle. Black. Short-hand for an old saying that's the pot calling the kettle black or, in other words, one person blaming someone else for something of which the first person is also guilty
POP - Post Office Protocol (see pop3, pop3d, ...)
POV - Point of View
PNG - Portable Network Graphics
PURL - Persistent Universal Resource Locator
QED - (for the classically inclined mathematician) ("quod erat demonstrandum") What had to be proven; (for the not-classically inclined physicist) quantum-electrodynamics, a highly elitist theory to explain the inexplicable with incomprehensible mathematics (which for some people, but not Tclers, is a pleonasm) (EKB This doesn't sound like a reference to QED, which by this point has become a workhorse theory. Are you thinking of string theory?)
QOTW - Quote of the Week ... used occasionally to indicate a small quote that should be considered as the Tcl-URL!'s frequently appearing feature "Quote of the Week".
QOTWC - Candidate for Quote of the Week. To indicate one would like to see that text as a new quote, but other people might object or find other uses.
RDBMS - Relational DataBase Management System
RC File - Resource Configuration (startup) file The RC file
RDF - Resource Description Framework [14] RDF is used to represent information and to exchange knowledge in the Web.
RE - Regular Expression
REPL - Read-Evaluate-Print Loop - the basic mode of working for a shell.
RFC - Request for Comments
RfD - Request for Discussion
RFE - Request for Enhancement
RIA - Rich Internet Application
RMI - Remote Method Invocation (Java RPC) built over JRMP
ROP - Remote Object Protocol. Generic name for object-based RPC, as in CORBA and DCOM.
ROT - Runnable Object Table
ROTFL - Rolling On The Floor, Laughing (also ROFL - rolling on floor laughing
ROTFLAHMS - Rolling On The Floor, Laughing And Holding My Sides
ROTFCASUB - Rolling On The Floor, Coughing And Spitting Up Blood
RPC - Remote Procedure Call (see Tnm/Scotty/TkInEd.) Can mean many things to many different people, but the aim is to hide the existence of a network and server behind a procedural interface so that programmers can just use it. Internet hostname resolution is quite often implemented as some kind of RPC call - the programmer says "translate this name to an IP address" and the network library then passes the name to a DNS server (which may perform further lookups) for resolution and waits for the answer to come back before returning. Sometimes, RPC can be rather a mixed blessing, since it can restrict responsiveness when the RPC call takes an unexpectedly long time... Most RPC mechanisms are implemented over a lower-level protocol like TCP/IP (CORBA I believe) or UDP/IP (SunRPC, which underlies NFS.)
RPN - Reverse Polish Notation
RSN - Real Soon Now (Something only months or years away from completion - AK Anyone using this acronym is probably deeply cynical - DKF)
RSS - Rich Site Summary, Really Simple Syndication, RDF Site Summary, take your pick!
RTF - Rich Text Format
RTFDTD - Read the F* DTD (good excuse for not having to document file formats ;-)
RTFM - Read The F.* Manual (where F.* can match words like Fine ;-)
RTFS - Read the F.* Source (last resort when no manual available, or first resort when manual useless or worse as is commonly the case with all too many software systems other than Tcl...)
SABENA - Such a Bloody Experience Never Again
SCADA - Supervisory control and data acquisition
SCM - Source Code Management
SCNR - Sorry, Could Not Resist
SCO - [15] - Santa Cruz Operations
SDK - Software Development Kit, usually consists of a set of tools, documentation, and other files a developer needs to, e.g. extend an existing software product
SEE - Smart Editing Environment
SEP - Someone Else's Problem (cf. SEP field)
SFIST - SourceForge Is Slow Today
SGML - Standard Generalized Markup Language
SICP - "Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs", a book
SIG - Special Interest Group
SMC - Sun Microcomputer Corporation
SMTP - Simple Mail Transfer Protocol
SNMP - Simple Network Management Protocol (e.g. see Tnm/Scotty/TkInEd)
SOL - Sadly Outta Luck
SQL - Search Query Language (used in database searches)
SSL - Secure Socket Layer, see also TLS.
STEP - Some Tcl Enhancing projects (a STEP forward)
SVN - Short for Subversion
SWS - Silly Window Syndrome
S3 -
Tao - Tcl Architecture of Objects
TANJ - There Ain't No Justice (from Robert Heinlein's The Moon is a Harsh Mistress) No, that's Larry Niven's Ringworld, a few pages into the first chapter.
TARITSFTRS - The Attachement Restrictions In The SourceForge Tracker Really Suck
TANSTAAFL - There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch (contributed by David Niemi, quoting Robert Heinlein in his Sci-Fi novel Moon is a Harsh Mistress)
Tcl - Tool Command Language [16]. In the Tcl community it does NOT stand for Think C Library, as it does in the Macintosh community. Neither does it stand for "The cool language" (though it is). RS sometimes refers to Tcl as "The Chameleon Language", because of Tcl's ability to be modified to the point where it seems like a whole new language -- for example, Radical Language Modification, Functional Programming, and many others.
Tclet - Tcl or Tcl/Tk script designed to run within the extra security constraints of the Tcl/Tk Tclet Plugin[17], e.g. in a web browser (Netscape/Mozilla/IE supported) in addition to functioning as a stand-alone script in most cases.
TCP/IP - Transport Control Protocol / Internet Protocol - IP is the mechanism whereby a chunk of data (a packet or datagram) can be sent from one machine to another (actually, it is a virtualization of the mechanism. The real mechanism is something like a modem, ethernet, ATM, token ring, or any of a thousand other possibilities.) IP is permitted to lose or mess up packets if it wants. TCP is a mechanism on top that provides ports and reliable streams of data (using the basic principle of "keep on saying something until the other side says they've got it".) If you throw some bytes into a TCP channel, you can usually assume that either the other end will get them in the order you specify, or the other end will vanish (e.g. if someone cuts through your phone line with a road-drill!)
TCT - Tcl Core Team
TDM - Time Division Multiplexing
TEA - Tcl Extension Architecture [18] (url is 404)
TEI - Text Encoding Initiative
TGIF - Thank Goodness (God) It's Friday
THX - Thanks (thank you)
TIA - Thanks In Advance
TIP - Tcl Improvement Proposal
Tk - ToolKit [19] centered around providing a higher level interface to GUI components - most commonly associated with its Tcl language-binding though it can be joined to other languages too (Perl, Python, SML and Prolog all have or had bindings, IIRC.)
TLA - Three Letter Acronym - Tiresome Lysergic Acronym
TLS - Thread-Local Storage (not to be confused with tls)
TMML - Tcl Manual Markup Language
TMTOWTDI - Perl motto: "There's more than one way to do it"
TOAD - Tcl Objects Accessing Data - Upcoming Universal database interface
TTDP - Tcl/Tk Documentation Project (TTDP)
TTFN - Ta Ta For Now
TTL - Time To Live [20]
TTY - Teletype (TM) Electromechanical typewriter
TYANNOTT - "Two Yesses And No Nos Or Two Thirds" is the project approval process adopted by the Tcl Core Team. To gain approval, a project must have the support of at least two TCT members with no objections, or it must pass by a 2/3 vote.
UDP - User Datagram Protocol (often misnamed as Unreliable Datagram Protocol) - Should be more formally known as UDP/IP. Offers a port abstraction over IP and provides the same guarantee against corruption that TCP does, but does not provide streams (i.e. it always works with chunks of data) and does not guarantee the eventual delivery of any data you happen to throw in. On the plus side, it does deliver data in a much more timely fashion than TCP, but programs have to be prepared for the loss or duplication of packets. The Tcl core does not currently support UDP, though several extensions do, e.g. Tnm/Scotty/TkInEd. Unless you are working with heart-beat applications or real-time media, you probably ought to be using TCP instead, as there are far fewer portability impedances with streams...
UML Universal Modeling Language
UMPC Ultra-Mobile Personal Computer - light weight PCs frequently running Linux and designed for use on the move.
URL - Universal Resource Locator. A web address (approximately).
US - United States
USA - United States of America
USENET - The USEr NETwork. The News system is a gigantic mixture of distributed database and networked message board. Its widespread use predates the widespread use of the Internet (c.f. UUCP and Fidonet) and it has an absolutely huge amount of accumulated culture and customs. Our little corner is known as news:comp.lang.tcl
UTM - Universal Transverse Mercator coordinate system
VAT - Value Added Tax
VMS - proprietary operating system for VAX and Alpha computers by Digital Equipment Corporation (now Compaq [21] )
W3C - WorldWide Web (W3) Consortium [22]
WAP - Wireless Application Protocol (I think.) Sort-of HTTP for mobile phones. Looks like it is going to be the standard for its domain, despite the best efforts of the North Americans...
WebDAV - Web distributed authoring versioning.
WIBNI - Wouldn't It Be Nice If ... (wishing for something, but not wanting it badly enough to see that it gets done)
WIMP - Windows, Icons, Mouse and Pointer, graphic surface as most everybody has it now (Or "Windows, Icons, Mice, and Pull-down Menus")
WIP - Work In Progress
WISH - Wee Integrated Suite of Helpers (software by David McClamrock); Window-opening, Integrating, Scripting, High-level language (what Tcl is)
WITM - (APW found it on c.l.t, but don't know what it means anybody else knows?)
wlog - Without Loss of Generality (from mathematics)
WML - Wireless Markup Language - W3C approved version of HDML
WOBBLE - Web Of Binary Building and Linking Engines
WOMBAT - Waste Of Memory, Brains And Time
WOOD - Wipe Out OS Differences (still a dream !)
WMF - Windows Meta Files
wrt - With Respect To (from mathematics)
WS - Web Service(s)
WSP - [Is RS working in this area?]
WWW - WorldWideWeb [23] (World Wide Wait) - Please note that the correct expansion for WWW is a single word. And no, I do not really like it either... :^)
WYSIAYG - What You See Is All You Get
WYSINWYG - What You See Is Never What You Get
WYSINAWYG - What You See Is Not Always What You Get
WYSIWYG - What You See Is What You Get - WYSIWYG is as bad a characteristic in text editors as it is in women. (a quote from a poster in comp.unix.solaris...)
WYSIWIG - What You See Is Fake Hair
XML - eXtensible Markup Language
XSL - eXtensible Stylesheet Language
XTLA - eXtended TLA, acronym of four or more letters ;-)
YACC - Yet Another Compiler Compiler - Parser code generator. Requires an external lexical analyser.
YAFIYGI - You asked for it, you got it
YMDV - Your Mileage Does Vary
YMMV - Your Mileage May Vary (your experiences may be different than mine)
YMWV - Your Mileage Will Vary.
zzz - Can represent sleeping (stacking Z's), particularly in the chat room. Can be various casings and even 2 z's instead of 3. See emoticons .

Category Glossary

Category TOC