accelerator table:An array of ACCEL structures, each of which defines a keyboard accelerator.
active window:The top-level window that the user is currently working with. Windows identifies the active window by positioning it at the top of the Z-order and highlighting its title bar and border.
additive color-technology:The color technology used by video displays which is based on three primary colors: red, green, and blue. Other colors (except black) are obtained by combining two or more of the primaries in varying amounts. Black is defined as the absence of the primaries.
ADPCM:(Adaptive Differential Pulse Code Modulation) An audio-compression technique.
animation:The display of a series of graphic images, simulating motion. Animation can be frame-based or cast-based.
anonymous pipe:An unnamed, one-way pipe that is used to transfer data between related processes. An anonymous pipe has two handles (read and write) that are created when the pipe is created. The creating process can pass these handles by inheritance to child processes.
arc:A curved line.
asynchronous input/output:A process that enables some Win32 file I/O functions to return immediately, even though an I/O request is still outstanding. This enables an application to continue with other processing and wait for the I/O to complete at a later time. Also known as “overlapped input/output”.
attribute:A characteristic of a file. The six Win32 file attributes indicate whether a file is read-only, hidden, system, archived, a directory, or normal.
auxiliary audio device:Audio devices whose output is mixed with the MIDI and waveform output devices in a multimedia computer. An example of an auxiliary audio device is the compact disc audio output from a CD-ROM drive.