Java Glossary

Last updated by Roedy Green ©1996-1999 Canadian Mind Products.

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W

W3C_logo
W3C
The consortium that looks after HTML and CGI standards. See HTML, CGI.
W3C_logo
W3C CSS validator
A service and program to validate your css style sheets in your HTML 4. See css.
Waba
Waba is a programming platform that lets developers write one program that can run on 3COM PalmPilot and Windows CE devices or on any machine that supports Java, for that matter.
WAIS
Internet Wide Area Information Server.
warehouse
See data warehouse.
Wassup
Free utility with Java source that tells you what's up with your Java environment, CLASSPATH, vendor, JVM, all the system properties. Works either as an Applet or application.
waterfall
The waterfall method refers to the classic non-OO methods where you did planning, then analysis, then design, then programming, etc. Each stage was finished before the next was begun and could be graphically depicted as a waterfall.
PLANNING
ANALYSIS
DESIGN
CONSTRUCTION
TESTING
IMPLEMENTATION
MAINTENANCE
wav
Microsoft's format for sound files. It is similar to AU format, but with more complicated headers. To convert Microsoft Window *.WAV files to AU format see code/sfx/Wav2Au available from Tony Hursh. CoolEdit available via Tucows will also do the conversion. Also look for Awave. JMF classes will let you play wav files directly. See sound, au, JMF.
Wavelet_Logo
Wavelet
A company that makes a compression engine for web images. It also makes a wavelet transform-base full-motion video compressor. See WIF.
wavelength
Pure colours are the colours of the rainbow. Higher frequency light in the rainbow spectrum of visible light has shorter wavelengths and more energy. Mixed colours like purple and brown don't appear on the rainbow. They can are created by mixing pure colours. Because of the way human vision works, it is possible to simulate the pure colours with mixtures of red, green, and blue light. The Wavelength package will let you create the pure rainbow colours (java.awt.Color objects) given their wavelength in nanometers or their frequency in teraHertz.
wavelength spectrum
See HSB, Color, RGB, CYMK, frequency.
wavelet compression
a technique for strongly compressing images. See Wavelet, WIF, JPEG, Fractal compression.
weak reference
A weak reference is one that does not prevent the referenced object from being garbage collected. The GC will send some sort of "finalize" message to the object and then set any weakly-referencing variables to null whenever it disposes of the referenced object. This allows "finalization" logic to be run before the object is disposed of (e.g., close a file if still open, commit any open transaction(s), etc.). Java does not support weak references other than via an undocumented Ref class that is not supported under Netscape. Weak references will be coming in JDK 1.2.
web
The aggregate collection of documents you can retrieve using the http protocol on the Internet. It is like a giant collaborative book, continuously updated by thousands of authors. It contains text, pictures, sound, and video. It can refer to all the computers accessible via the Internet, or more narrowly the text and graphics available to browsers via HTTP protocol on those computers. Sometimes it is used as a generic term for any sort of electronic communication via email, newsgroups or web sites.
web counter
See hit counter.
Web Pump
a browser that lets you rapidly download just the HTML and graphics you want from a site. By using specialised techniques you can do this five times faster than you could with an ordinary browser.
WebLogic
Weblogic makes a set of two-tier JDBC drivers and a T3 server they claim are 20 times faster than using an ODBC bridge. See three tier, JDBC.
Webreader
a web browser/newsreader written entirely in Java. It reads/writes posts in HTML.
WebRing logo
WebRing
An organisation that helps organise webrings, like-minded websites that link to each other in circle. Webring does this as a free service, and don't they even demand ads. It is very simple. You are assigned a site id that you embed in some cgi-map HTML on your page that links you indirectly via the master WebRing database site to the other sites on your ring. I have proposed a new generation of WebRing software as one of my suggested student project outlines.
WebShop
A Java based shopping cart system. Supports 10 server platforms. Supports English, Portuguese, Russian, Japanese and German.
Website
A computer with a permanent Internet connection. People from all over the world can connect to it via the Internet to retrieve text and graphics using the HTTP protocol.
WebTop
A project by IBM, Lotus and Sun to create a standard Java-based API for web applications. No API details have been announced. We might expect WebTop to be based on Lotus Ensuite. It would compete with Windows. Its advantages would be:
WebTwin
WebTwin converts HTML files or web sites into a Windows help file. The new help file can be searched by using the Windows Help program. This makes searching and browsing much faster. In the right Java editor, Java documentation is then accessible via an F1 keystroke.
Who's Who
Here is a beginning at a listing of the technically (as opposed to politically) important people in the world of Java and comp.lang.java.*.
Who Company What they do
Dick Baldwin Austin Community College Writes scores of Java tutorials.
Mike Cowlishaw IBM Father of Rexx and NetRexx. General purpose genius.
David Flanagan O'Reilly Books Author of the classic Java In A Nutshell (ISBN: 1-56592-262-X standard or 1-56592-304-9 deluxe with CD containing related books)
Dion Gillard Multitask Consulting Vegemite eater from Down Under; known to appear in public in white pyjamas with white polka dots. Documented the undocumented Sun classes. SCID advocate. Bloody genius.
James Gosling Sun Father of Java
Roedy Green Canadian Mind Products Maintains the Java glossary you are now reading; Java futurist. Father of Abundance.
Marty Hall Johns Hopkins University Author of Core Web Programming (ISBN: 0-13-625666-X), pretty well the only book on using CGI and client-side Java together. He is probably the clearest writer on Java. Marty has posted all the source code examples from the book for anyone to use. These contain updates and errata fixes you don't get on the CD-ROM that comes with the book. Marty also maintains a set of Links to Java resources.
Dave Harris B H Research Accurate, fair, knowlegeable.
David Holmes Macquarie University expert on threads.
Arthur van Hoff Sun Father of the AWT, Marimba and Bongo, and author of great chunks of the JDK and Hooked on Java (ISBN: 0-201-48837-X).
Bill Joy Sun Creator of Jini. Author of The Java Language Specification (Java Series) (ISBN:0-201-63451-1).
Matt Kennel University of California San Diego Scholar who adds light and removes heat from Java debates.
Donald Knuth Stanford University His Art Of Computer Programming (ISBN: 0-201-48541-9) volumes 1, 2 and 3 are the reference works for standard algorithms. See Knuth, Donald.
Wayne Kovsky Colorado Software Summit Organises the Colorado Java Software summit each Winter in the mountains of Colorado.
Peter van der Linden Sun Maintains the most up to date Java FAQ. Author of Just Java 1.2 (ISBN: 0-13-010534-1).
Peter Mehlitz Transvirtual Developed the first lightweight widget AWT system for BISS.
Bertrand Meyer Interactive Software Engineering Father of programming by contract and Eiffel. Author of the classic text Object-Oriented Software Construction (ISBN: 0-13-629155-4)
Jan Newmarch Canberra University Expert on events.
David Pollack Athena Developed the first collaborative spreadsheet, Integer.
Jonathan Revusky Crystalline Solutions Designer of SmartJ. Advocate for more streamlined, user-friendly, computer tools.
Patricia Shanahan ACM Patiently, completely and accurately answers hundreds of newbie questions each month.
Bill Wilkinson Chilsoft Entertaining discoverer and documenter of gotchas in Java, particularly involving serialisation.
Tim Wilkinson Transvirtual Father of Kaffe, a cleanroom JVM implementation. Original designer and developer of the Java SmartCard.
Niklaus Wirth ETH Father of Pascal, Modula, Oberon, Euler ... Advocate of lean languages that compile and execute quickly.
widget
"Widget" in X-Windows is "component" in Javanese. See component.
Wavelet_Logo
WIF
*.wif Wavelet Image Files are a replacement for *.jpg files on the web. They use a mathematical technique called wavelet transforms to achieve an astounding 300 to 1 compression. This is a quite different mathematical technique from fractals. This means you can put giant full colour images on your website and have people download them without long waits. The only catch is the user must install a free plug-in to decode the Wavelet files. You need a special <EMBED syntax in your html to display the pictures. The viewer is not available for all platforms. If you have the WIF viewer in installed, you will be able to view these full screen images in a twinkling:
use_wavelet Original
1,153kb
75:1
(16kb)
150:1
(8kb)
300:1
(4kb)
Unfortunately, if you have native PNG support for those images you won't be able to see them! Different HTML is required for native vs plug-in support. See Wavelet, GIF, JPEG, PNG.
Window
Like a frame, but without Window without borders or menu bar. A generic term for both a frame and dialog. Windows can accept keystrokes. See Frame, Dialog, Canvas, Panel.
Windows CE
A stripped down version of the Windows operating system that can fit in ROM in pocket-organiser-sized computers. It is not a Java-based system. It is not portable; it is based around the Intel chip with typically 4 MB ROM and 4 MB RAM. See Business Java, Personal Java, Embedded Java.
WinG
provides fast DIB-to-screen blts under Windows 3.1, Windows for Workgroups 3.11, Windows 95, and Windows NT version 3.5. WinG will not run on Windows NT version 3.1 or on earlier versions of Windows. IBM's Java implementation for Win 3.1 requires WinG.
WingDis
A Java reverse compiler to reverse engineer class files back into Java source code. WingDis is implemented completely in Java, and it can run on both JDK 1.0.2 and JDK 1.1. To use it you need a BAT file something like this:
java -classpath d:\wingdis;%CLASSPATH% wingsoft.Decompiler -s %1
The results it generates are often hard to find. They don't always end up in the same directory as the class file you are decompiling. Formerly known as JavaDis. See disassemble.
Wingen
a Java code generator.
Wise
A company that makes a range of program installers InstallMaker (~$200), InstallBuilder(~$400), InstallMaster (~$800) and InstallManager (~$1800). They are not tuned to handle Java. They are revolve more around the Microsoft world of "DLL Hell", another of their products. See installation.
womb
A program that runs on a server that supports small Java servlet programs that process transactions. Also the part of a web browser that supports applets. See servlet, Applet.
WORA
Write Once, Run Anywhere. The Java goal of perfect platform independence.
wrapper
Java won't let you change a caller's variable. However it will let you change the fields inside a caller's object passed to you as a parameter. To get around the limitation that you can't change the caller's variables, (or return multiple values), you create a dummy class. You can then have the caller pass you an object of that dummy class and you fiddle its fields. Alternatively you create such an object, fill in its fields and return it to the caller. That dummy class is called a wrapper. The term is also used for an immutable Integer -- a wrapper around an int to turn it into an object.



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