Aliasing
Jagged or false patterns created when a continuous signal is sampled too coarsely.
REFERENCE
Glossary.
Plain-language definitions for the machinery and mathematics used throughout the collection.
A
Alpha
A value describing pixel coverage or opacity during compositing.
Anti-aliasing
Techniques that preserve partial edge coverage to make rasterised shapes appear smoother.
B
Backlight
The shared light source behind the filtering layers of an LCD.
Bandwidth
The amount of information a channel can move in a given period.
Bézier curve
A parametric curve controlled by endpoints and one or more handles.
Binary
A positional number system with two digits, used to represent reliable electronic states.
Bit depth
The number of bits used to store one sample, channel or pixel component.
Bitmap
An image represented as a rectangular grid of pixel values.
C
Cache
Small, fast storage that keeps recently or predictably needed data close to a processor.
Capacitance
The ability of a system to store electric charge; the property measured by most touchscreens.
Chroma
The colour component of an image considered separately from brightness.
Compiler
Software that translates a program into another executable representation.
Compression
Encoding information with fewer bits by removing redundancy or perceptually unimportant detail.
Convolution
A neighbourhood operation that combines samples using a moving weighted kernel.
CRT
A display that steers an electron beam across a phosphor-coated screen.
E
Entropy
A measure of uncertainty that sets a lower bound for lossless compression.
F
Framebuffer
Memory containing the colour values for an image currently being displayed.
G
Gamut
The bounded set of colours a device or colour space can represent.
Glyph
A particular drawn form used to represent a character or character sequence.
GPU
A processor designed to run many similar numerical tasks in parallel.
H
Hash
A fixed-size, one-way fingerprint calculated from arbitrary input data.
L
LCD
A display that uses liquid crystals and polarising filters to control a backlight.
O
OLED
A display whose organic emissive sub-pixels each generate their own light.
P
Pixel
The smallest independently addressable sample in a raster image or display.
Q
Quantisation
Reducing a continuous or high-precision range to a smaller set of representable values.
R
Rasterisation
Converting mathematical geometry into coverage values on a pixel grid.
S
Shader
A small program executed across graphics data on the GPU.
Sub-pixel
One colour component—usually red, green or blue—inside a display pixel.
V
Vector
An ordered group of numbers used to describe a position, direction or abstract feature.
ViewBox
The internal coordinate rectangle that defines how an SVG scales into its viewport.