Monday, July 1, 2002		Book Review

Dictionary of IT Terms by S K Bansal, APH Publishing Corporation, Delhi. Pages 244. Rs 795.

What is it that the geeks and ordinary mortals share? Not much, you would say, since geek is, by definition, a person who is single-minded or accomplished in scientific or technical pursuits, even though somewhat socially inept.

It is the fear of not knowing one of the many terms that occur in any information technology-related conversation. As it is, despite the downswing in the IT industry as a whole, IT dominated the decade, and many of these terms have made inroads into ordinary language.

Chatting is not verbal any longer. "Networking" may involve more electronic communication than people, to "boot up" is not to strap on your ammo boots, and so on. At times like this, even common people want to know what IT terms mean.

This book lists out hundreds of such terms, along with their meanings.

If we take the definition of a dictionary as "a book that gives a list of the words of a language in alphabetical order and explains what they mean, or gives a word for them in a foreign language," this book is one, but it lacks features that we have got used to seeing in modern dictionaries: there is no attempt to look at the etymology, i.e., the origin and history of particular words, the pronunciations are not given in phonetic symbols and usage guides are conspicuous by their absence.

At the same time, it is useful in understanding various terms. Thus, we find out that "splash screen" is a "temporary window displayed by a computer to inform, warn, or alert the viewer that a significant event has happened or is about to happen. Splash screens are used to inform, warn, or alert the user of errors or to offer a choice for some system option, or to advertise a product, or to inform the user of the progress in a process such as program installation."

While the book will be useful for those who do not have any access to such information, it is priced rather steeply at Rs 795. This is where those with Internet access would have an advantage. There are many dictionaries available online, most of them free, and they should be able to get the meaning of such terms at such Websites such as www.dictionary.com.

A traditional source for such information online, is The Free On-line Dictionary of Computing, (www.foldoc.org). It has been there since 1985 and now contains 13,578 definitions, given by 1,500 contributors. Edited by Denis Howe, this dictionary is supported by the Department of Computing, Imperial College of Science, Technology and Medicine, University of London, London, UK, and is hosted on their Website. It can be accessed at the following URL: http://foldoc.doc.ic.ac.uk/foldoc/index.html

It has also been mirrored on various Websites around the world and the nearest ones can be found at www.nue.org/foldoc/index.html and www.nightflight.com/foldoc

As for the book, it is useful, but like most printed material, it would have the limitations of being static and not dynamic in content. It would have some appeal, offline, which, according to this book, means, "pertaining to the operating of a functional unit that may be connected, but is unable to interact with another functional unit. The other functional unit is usually senior in some respect."

FOLDOC puts it more succinctly: "Not directly connected to the computer, or with connection suspended.