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| Abbreviation |
| A shortened form of a word or phrase. |
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| Ablation (thermal erosion) |
| A technique for the imaging of offset plates, by which a thermal erosion layer is removed. The printing plates then only require mechanical treatment and in some cases can be rinsed with water. The main disadvantage of this system is that it produces debris which must be removed from the CtP system. |
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| Accordion fold |
| See "zig-zag fold". |
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| Acrobat |
| A software program developed by Adobe, which allows documents to be viewed using a reader (available free of charge) on every commonly used computer platform and to be printed on PostScript printers. The major advantage of the program is that all fonts, colors and the layout itself are identical to the original document, even if the fonts or the program used to create it are not installed on the viewer's computer. It is a global standard in document management.
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| Acronym |
| A shortened form of a word or compound term usually formed from its initial letters. |
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| Additive color |
| A color produced through the addition of light of various colors. In theory, every color can be produced by mixing the primary colors of the visible light spectrum: red, green and blue (RGB), as the color vision of the human eye works through red-, green- and blue- sensitive sensory cells. RGB is the usual additive color system and is used predominantly for television screens, computer monitors and scanners. Combining two of the primary colors in equal parts produces the secondary colors cyan, magenta and yellow, which in turn form the basic colors of the subtractive color system (CMYK). |
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| Additive color mixing |
| This is the process of producing color through the addition of different colors of light. Computer and television screens use thousands of red, green, and blue phosphor dots, which are so small and close together that the human eye cannot see them individually. Instead, the eye sees the colors formed by the mixture of light. |
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| Adhesive binding |
| A binding method which uses thread-free adhesives to secure loose leaves into a solid text block. |
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| Administrator |
| Person with all rights of access to a network and responsible for its management and maintenance. |
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| Adobe |
| Adobe Systems Incorporated, headquartered in San Jose, California, is a leading software manufacturer in the field of graphics and image editing. Established in 1982, the company's products include the image editing program "Photoshop", the illustration program "Illusrator" and the desktop publication programs "InDesign" and "Pagemarker." Adobe is also the creator of the page description language "PostScript" and the device-independent data format "PDF" (Portable Document Format). |
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| Algorithm |
| A structure, basic scheme or pattern used for software, process or decision functions. |
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| Align |
| To place the material to be cut at the correct position in the machine. |
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| Alpha channel |
| An eight-bit storage segment reserved for masks in an image processing software program; a feature incorporated into image processing software programs and image data formats for storing processing routines and an image's special properties (for example, background transparency). |
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| Altar fold (gatefold or windowfold) |
| Folding a sheet of paper so that two flaps are formed that can be opened from either side. |
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| Amplitude modulated screening (autotypical screening) |
| A halftone screening method in which equidistant dots are used, the variation of the size of which produces continuous tone pictures. In combined printing, several colour forms must be arranged at varying, exactly defined screen angles in order to avoid moiré patterns. |
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| Anchor point |
| Defines the start or end of a path segment (a path consists of one or more segments). They fix the path at a specific position. The path segments and the shape of the path are changed by moving the anchor points. |
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| Aniline printing |
| An old term for flexographic printing whose name is derived from the aniline-based inks employed during the process. Printing presses using this process employ rubber rollers as letterpress forms and print with quick-drying, low-viscosity inks. The first presses of this type appeared on the market at the beginning of the 20th century. They were mainly used to print packaging material. |
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| Anilox letterpress printing |
| A form of printing which uses a very simple ink dispensing system borrowed from gravure printing. An inking roller ("anilox roller") with small recesses arranged in a grid form is inked to excess and a doctor blade is then used to remove the excess ink. This immediately results in a very uniform film of ink, such that no further rollers are needed in the inking unit for ink distribution. The advantages of this process include the simple design of the inking unit and the ease with which ink feed can be controlled. |
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| Animation |
| Generic term for the combination of image, text, graphics and moving images (videos) within a file and its presentation on a computer monitor. |
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| Application server |
| A network server in which a group of programs are collectively integrated into a Web server's environment. Instead of having individually installed programs, network users have access to the server program. These applications are connected to an Application Program Interface (API) which allows higher-level tasks to be performed remotely. Another advantage of these applications is that licensing requirements can be more easily met, as the users do not usually have their own hard drive, which prevents the installation of so-called pirate copies. It is also possible to install the latest software available on all computers in the network with a single update on the server. This kind of server enables a user to perform sophisticated interactions over the internet, such as querying a database or running other programs loaded on the server. |
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| Application software |
| A program with specific functions, not to be confused with an operating system, which controls a computer’s internal functions. All software is application software. |
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| Areometer |
| A device for determining the density of liquids used in printing to measure the concentration of alcohol in water-containing process liquids. The device consists of a sealed glass tube filled with air with a weight at one end. Once the areometer is placed in the liquid being tested, it floats either higher or lower, depending on the density of the liquid. The density can then be read using a scale graduated in special units (Bé after Baumé or Brix). Because the density of liquids changes with temperature, the scale of an areometer is always relative to a specific temperature. To make correct measurements easier to obtain, some areometers also feature a thermometer. |
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| Art printing |
| High-quality sheetfed offset printing on high-quality paper typically used for the production of sophisticated illustrated books. |
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| Art printing paper |
| A premium-grade stock coated on both sides (C2S), preferable for the high-quality reproduction of color prints. Art printing papers usually have a very smooth, glossy surface, though some have a matte or semi-matte finish. They allow illustrations to be reproduced by offset or letterpress in much finer halftone screens. |
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| Artificial parchment |
| Wood-free paper with properties similar to those of genuine parchment, above all in its grease resistance, which results from the smeary grinding of the chemical pulp. |
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| Ascender |
| The utmost point of the cap height, the extension of the font from the baseline to the upper end of an uppercase letter. |
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| ASCII (American Standard Code for Information Interchange) |
| Used to encode letters and numbers in digital form for electronic storage and processing. Originally binary numbers with seven digits (seven bits) were used, which made it possible to represent a total of 128 characters. The use of 8-bit numbers was later introduced, increasing the total to 256 characters. Unicode notation based on 16-bit numbers has been gaining increasing acceptance in recent years. It can be used to represent 65,536 different characters. |
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| Ash content |
| The quantity of anorganic substances in a paper stock that will be converted to ash when burned. |
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| Asphalt coating |
| Term given to a dark brown–black mixture made of wax, resin and asphalt. It is easy to melt and can be dissolved in organic solvents such as gasoline, petroleum or turpentine. Due to its resistance to acids, asphalt coating serves as a covering layer in the etching processes used for manufacturing printing forms. |
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| Assymetrical fold |
| A fold made by folding the original into unequal lengths. This type of fold is used for parallel fold products and concertina folds. |
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| AT (advanced technology) |
| Descendant of the XT computer and built on a 80286-Processor from Intel. Introduced by IBM in 1984, today every PC that works with a 16- or 32-Bit processor is called an AT computer. |
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| Autograph |
| Derived from the Greek ("self-written"), refers to a document handwritten, or at least signed, by an author. There have been collections of the autographs of famous persons, and a corresponding trade in these documents, since the end of the 16th century. |
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