Symbian
Symbian OS Library

SYMBIAN OS V9.3

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B:

backed-up window

A window whose contents are backed up, so that the window never becomes invalid, and therefore never needs to be redrawn except at application request.

See also: redraw  invalid  window  

background colour

The colour with which to fill the parts of the view rectangle in which text (and paragraph fill colour, if one has been set) cannot appear. Examples of such areas are below the last line of the document and in the label and line cursor margins. May also be used to fill the left text margin, if one has been set.

See also: text area  paragraph fill colour  line cursor margin  label margin  left text margin  line  

backup

Application Framework : A window whose contents are backed up never becomes invalid, and therefore never needs to be redrawn except at application request.

BAFL

Basic Application Framework Library.

See also: Engine Utilities  

band

Printing : Horizontal portions of a page whose height depends on the size of the memory buffer of the printer device in use.

See also: printer device  

bank

An area of physical address space reserved for a particular type of memory (e.g. RAM, ROM, I/O) and which may be empty or only partially filled

baseband

The band of frequencies of a signal before it is modulated for transmission at another frequency.

base year

Application Engines : In an anniversary entry, this allows the application to display a number of years between the base year and the current anniversary.

based-on link

Text Content : A pointer to the format layer whose attributes are inherited by another layer. To find out a character or paragraph's effective formatting, all based-on links must be examined, beginning at the format layer upon which all other layers are based.

See also: format layer  effective format  

baseline

The baseline of a character is the notional line that splits the descent of a character from its ascent (see Character cell metrics (ascent, descent, height and baseline)).

See also: character cell ascent  character cell descent  

baseline offset

The perpendicular distance from the baseline of a font to another parallel line, such as the underline, strikethrough, superscript or subscript position (see Underlining and baseline offsets).

See also: baseline  

BDB

Bank Descriptor Block, a list of entries describing banks.

bdf file

Binary distribution format - used in font definition files.

See also: Fontcomp  

bearer

A telephone network used to carry a call.

bearer name

The type of data service, e.g. Asynchronous, or Synchronous.

BER

Bit error rate.

binary mode

When a file is open in binary mode, the data bytes in the file are read and written without any intervention by the file system.

See also: text mode  

BITGDI

The screen and bitmap-specific graphics drawing component.

See also: bitmap  

bitmap

Provides the pixel patterns used by pictures, icons and masks, sprites and brush styles for filling areas of the display.

See also: mbm 

bitmap converter tool

Converts bitmaps between MS Windows to Symbian bitmap format and vice versa.

See also: multi-bitmap file format 

bitmap mask

A bitmap whose pixels are used to hinder or allow the individual pixels of another bitmap to be written to a graphics device.

See also: icon  bitmap  

bitmap primitive

A graphics operation to draw a bitmap.

See also: graphics operation  bitmap  

bldmake tool

Processes the component description file (bld.inf) in the current directory and generates the batch file abld.bat and several build batch makefiles (.make.abld) can then use the makefiles to carry out the various stages of building the component.

See also: abld.bat batch file 

blit

Block transfer copy of pixel data from memory to a graphics device.

See also: stretch blit  

Bluetooth

Refers to a short-range radio technology used to simplify communications among Net devices and between devices on the Internet. It also simplifies data synchronisation between Net devices and other comuters.

Standardised by the Bluetooth SIG in the form of the v1.0 Bluetooth Specification.

Bmconv

Converts bitmaps between Windows and Symbian OS formats.

bmp file

Extension for a Windows bitmap file.

See also: windows bitmap  

bootloader

Optional code which runs immediately on reset, before the bootstrap.

bootstrap

A short program, often written in assembler, which gains control when the machine is first powered on. The bootstrap sets up an environment that will allow the Kernel to continue to boot Symbian OS (e.g. setting up memory, I/O devices and creating virtual memory space).

brush

The brush is used, in basic graphics functions, for filling areas drawn with the shape primitives, and also for text background fills.

See also: pen  graphics context  brush attribute  

brush attribute

Brush attributes, in basic graphics functions, are: brush colour, brush origin, brush style.

See also: brush  brush origin  brush style  

brush colour

The colour which the brush uses for fills.

See also: brush attribute  

brush origin

The point at which the top left corner of the pattern reference tile is positioned.

See also: brush attribute  

brush style

The style with which the brush fills fillables. This may be null, solid colour, a built-in pattern or a bitmap pattern.

See also: brush attribute  

Brutus

Development board for the StrongArm SA-1100.

BSS

A section in an executable's disk image that denotes how much uninitialised data the executable needs to run.

buffer

An area of memory designated to contain a portion of data awaiting processing.

See also: dynamic buffers  descriptors 

buffer position

The position of a byte within a segmented or flat buffer: bytes are numbered from zero, and the address of the byte indexed by a given buffer position is calculated each time the buffer is accessed.

See also: flat buffer  segmented buffer  

built-in type

Data types which are part of the C++ language; e.g. unsigned int, unsigned char etc.

button co-ordinator

An object which co-ordinates the behaviour of a group of option buttons. It keeps track of the current chosen option button.

See also: option button