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foreground

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foreground

 

  4  definitions  found 
 
  From  Webster's  Revised  Unabridged  Dictionary  (1913)  [web1913]: 
 
  Foreground  \Fore"ground`\,  n. 
  On  a  painting,  and  sometimes  in  a  bas-relief,  mosaic  picture, 
  or  the  like  that  part  of  the  scene  represented,  which  is 
  nearest  to  the  spectator,  and  therefore  occupies  the  lowest 
  part  of  the  work  of  art  itself  Cf  {Distance},  n.,  6. 
 
  From  WordNet  r  1.6  [wn]: 
 
  foreground 
  n  1:  the  part  of  a  scene  that  is  near  the  viewer 
  2:  (computer  science)  the  screen  area  occupied  by  a  window  for 
  an  active  application 
  v  :  move  into  the  foreground  to  make  more  visible  or  prominent; 
  "The  introduction  highlighted  the  speaker's  distinguished 
  career  in  linguistics"  [syn:  {highlight},  {spotlight},  {play 
  up}]  [ant:  {background},  {background}] 
 
  From  Jargon  File  (4.2.3,  23  NOV  2000)  [jargon]: 
 
  foreground  vt  [Unix;  common]  To  bring  a  task  to  the  top  of 
  one's  {stack}  for  immediate  processing,  and  hackers  often  use  it  in  this 
  sense  for  non-computer  tasks.  "If  your  presentation  is  due  next  week, 
  I  guess  I'd  better  foreground  writing  up  the  design  document." 
 
  Technically,  on  a  time-sharing  system,  a  task  executing  in 
  foreground  is  one  able  to  accept  input  from  and  return  output  to  the 
  user;  oppose  {background}.  Nowadays  this  term  is  primarily  associated 
  with  {{Unix}},  but  it  appears  first  to  have  been  used  in  this  sense 
  on  OS/360.  Normally,  there  is  only  one  foreground  task  per  terminal 
  (or  terminal  window);  having  multiple  processes  simultaneously  reading 
  the  keyboard  is  a  good  way  to  {lose}. 
 
 
 
  From  The  Free  On-line  Dictionary  of  Computing  (13  Mar  01)  [foldoc]: 
 
  foreground 
 
  (Unix)  On  a  {time-sharing}  system,  a  task  executing  in 
  foreground  is  one  able  to  accept  input  from  and  return  output 
  to  the  user  in  contrast  to  one  running  in  the  {background}. 
  Nowadays  this  term  is  primarily  associated  with  {Unix},  but  it 
  appears  first  to  have  been  used  in  this  sense  on  {OS/360}. 
  Normally,  there  is  only  one  foreground  task  per  terminal  (or 
  terminal  window).  Having  multiple  processes  simultaneously 
  reading  the  keyboard  is  confusing. 
 
  [{Jargon  File}] 
 
  (1994-10-24)




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