P

packet: A unit of information transmitted as a whole from one device to another on a network.
parallel port: The input/output connector for a parallel interface device.
parent window: A window that has one or more child windows.
parser: An application that breaks data into smaller chunks so that a program can act upon the information. For example, Mobile Channels use a Channel Definition Format parser to parse a channel.
pASP: See pocket Active Server Pages.
path: 1. In communications, a link between two nodes in a network. 2. A route through a structured collection of information, as in a database, a program, or files stored on disk. 3. In programming, the sequence of instructions a computer carries out in executing a routine. 4. In file storage, the route followed by the operating system in finding, sorting, and retrieving files on a disk. 5. In graphics, an accumulation of line segments or curves to be filled or overwritten with text.
PC card: A trademark of the Personal Computer Memory Card International Association (PCMCIA) that is used to describe add-in cards that conform to the PCMCIA specification. A PC Card is a removable device approximately the same size as a credit card that is designed to plug into a PCMCIA slot. Type I cards are primarily used as memory-related peripherals. Type II cards accommodate devices such as modem, fax, and network cards. Type III cards accommodate devices that require more space, such as wireless communications devices and rotating storage media, including hard disks.
PCT: See Program Comprehension Tool.
PDD: See platform dependent driver.
pen: A drawing tool used to draw lines and curves.
persistent object: The Component Object Model (COM) defines standards through which clients can request objects to be initialized, loaded, and saved to and from a data store, such as a flat file, structured storage, or memory. COM objects that adhere to these standards are called persistent objects.
personal information manager (PIM): A category of software applications such as Lotus Notes or Microsoft Exchange that allow the user to manage scheduling, tasks, and contact information.
phone-book: Entries in the Remote Access Service (RAS) phone-book contain the information necessary to establish a RAS connection. Unlike Windows NT, which keeps the phone-book entries in a file, Windows CE stores these entries in the registry.
PIM: See personal information manager.
ping: A protocol for testing whether a particular computer is connected to the Internet by sending a packet to its Internet Protocol (IP) address and waiting for a response.
platform: 1. The foundation technology of a computer system. Because computers are layered devices composed of a chip-level hardware layer, a firmware and operating-system layer, and an applications program layer, the bottommost layer of a machine is often called a platform. 2. In everyday usage, the type of computer or operating system being used. 3. The hardware upon which an implementation of Windows CE will run. 4. The directory structure containing the hardware-specific files needed to build an implementation of Windows CE.
platform dependent driver (PDD): The platform-specific layer of built-in device drivers that is supplied by an original equipment manufacturer. See built-in device driver.
platform directory: The root of the directory structure where platform-specific files are stored. Each subdirectory in the platform directory specifies the name of a development workstation.
pocket Active Server Pages (pASP): A scaled-down version of the Active Server Pages optimized for server-side Mobile Channels scripting.
Point-to-Point Protocol (PPP): An advanced serial packet protocol commonly used for dial-up connections.
POP3: See Post Office Protocol 3.
pop-up menu: A menu that appears on the screen when a user selects a certain item. Pop-up menus can appear anywhere on the screen, and they generally disappear when the user selects an item in the menu.
pop-up window: A special type of overlapped window typically used for dialog boxes, message boxes, and other temporary windows that appear outside an application's main window.
position index: An identifier associated with each address card in the Contacts database. The position index indicates the address card's position relative to the other address cards in the database. A position index is distinct from an object identifier.
POSIX: See Portable Operating System Interface for Computer Environments.
Portable Operating System Interface for Computer Environments (POSIX): An IEEE standard that defines the open systems environment standards for system interfaces, shells, tools, testing, verification, real-time processing, security, system administration, networking, and transaction processing. The standard is based on UNIX system services, but it allows implementation on other operating systems.
Post Office Protocol 3 (POP3): A standard protocol for transferring mail messages on demand from a mail server.
PPP: See Point-to-Point Protocol.
Ppsh: A parallel port shell utility that enables you to download a binary image from the development workstation to the target platform and gives you access to debugging processes running on the development platform.
predefined control

A control belonging to a window class supplied by Windows CE.

preemptive multitasking: The ability of the operating system to schedule execution time for multiple processes and threads by periodically suspending the execution of the currently executing thread and switching to another high-priority thread.
priority class: A range of thread priority levels. Whereas Win32 utilizes four priority classes with seven base priority levels per class, Windows CE has only eight base priority levels. Hence, for processes running under Windows CE, preemption is based solely on the thread's priority.
priority inheritance: A process by which a thread that is blocking a shared resource needed by a higher priority thread inherits the priority of that higher priority thread in order to free the resource for use by the higher priority thread, thus preventing priority inversion.
priority inversion: Priority inversion is a situation in which higher priority thread A spawns lower-priority thread B to access a shared resource that is already in use by lower-priority thread C with greater priority than thread B, blocking higher-priority thread A. This situation can be averted by a process of priority inheritance.
process: An executing application that consists of a private virtual address space, code, data, and other operating-system resources, such as files, pipes, and synchronization objects that are visible to the process. A process also contains one or more threads that run in the context of the process.
program comprehension tool (PCT): A software engineering tool that facilitates the process of understanding the structure and/or functionality of computer programs.
program memory: Program memory is used for stack and heap storage for both system and non-system programs. Non-system applications are taken from storage memory, uncompressed, and loaded into program memory for execution.
progress bar: A common control that indicates the progress of a lengthy operation by displaying a colored bar inside a horizontal rectangle. The length of the bar in relation to the length of the rectangle corresponds to the percentage of the operation that is complete.
project: 1. The implementation of an instance of Windows CE. 2. The directory structure — under Public — containing files that define which components will be included in an implementation of Windows CE.
property: With respect to the database application programming interface, a property refers to a data item that consists of a property identifier, data type, and value. Windows CE supports several data types such as integer, string, time, and binary large object (BLOB).
property sheet: A type of dialog box that lists the attributes or settings of an object, such as a file, application, or hardware device. A property sheet presents the user with a tabbed, index card–like selection of property pages, each of which features standard dialog box-style controls for customizing parameters.
public-key encryption: An asymmetric scheme that uses a pair of keys for encryption: The public key encrypts data, and a corresponding secret key decrypts it. For digital signatures, the process is reversed: The sender uses the secret key to create a unique electronic number that can be read by anyone possessing the corresponding public key, which verifies that the message is truly from the sender.
push button: A small rectangular control that a user can turn on or off. A push button, also known as a command button, has a raised appearance in its default off state and a depressed appearance when it is turned on.