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ideas' witnesses; ideas' witnesses;
ideas- ideas-
2022-12-31
2022-04-19
Snippets from /home/trinity/homepage/computer.html
Hello and welcome to the world of computing.
This guide is intended to take you from a cursory or completely
nonexistent knowledge of how computers work or even what a computer is to an
understanding with which you're comfortable.
As this guide will go on the manner of language will shift from
conversational and casual to more formal and technical; this is because these
earlier sections are more like learning to ride a bike, where you won't easily
forget the basics, but the later sections are more like learning to build a
bike, where you may need to reference the manual later.
This is also a perpetually unfinished document, please refer to the
<I>updated</I> date as its version if your citation format permits it.
To start, let's run over some basic terminology.
Many of these terms are ambiguous and will be better specified later.
The Monitor
The monitor (term taken from the verb <I>monitor</I>), or screen
(term taken from the verb <I>screen</I>), is a raster display unit your
computer controls. In some manner, which depends on the technology your monitor
uses, there is being displayed some sort of content that your computer has
generated. It may be these very words. Monitors are usually interchangeable but
sometimes entire computers can be included in the monitor unit itself, the
concept of which is known as <I>all-in-one computer units</I> because
all components of the computer except input devices are in the same place (the
monitor assembly).
It's possible your computer doesn't have a monitor. Possibly, you're
using a teletypewriter, which prints text output onto paper using ink, though
this is unlikely as they were obsoleted fifty years ago in favor of "glass
teletypes" (<I>glass</I> here refers to the glass tube of a cathode ray
tube monitor). Possibly, you're using assistive technologies and aren't sighted.
Or maybe you're making this entire document up and are in a dream. There are
many ways to use computers that <I>don't</I> involve monitors but seeing
as they're so common-place there's a very good likelihood you are indeed using
one.
The Key-board
The keyboard is how many people input text into their computer. There
are many types of keyboards. Most people use standard QWERTY (named such after
the first five alphabetical runes that appear on the board) keyboards, where
each button is one symbol and perhaps there are special buttons that change the
meaning of the other buttons. There are also <I>chorded</I> keyboards,
where each <I>combination</I> (or chord, like on a piano) of keys
represents a symbol.
Possibly, you're not using a keyboard at all, and are instead using
assistive technologies such as speech recognition.
My intent with the computer guide was to emphasize atypical but
important interfaces between user and machine, to make the guide relevant to
every single person who would read the guide. Making a guide only for those who
are sighted, hearing, have feeling in their fingertips, can read small text, is
ridiculous and limits the audience far too much. Accessibility is the future
absolutely.
2022-12-30 2022-12-30
I occasionally write blahposts a day in advance. And who will stop me? I occasionally write blahposts a day in advance. And who will stop me?