| Word or
Term |
Description or
Explanation |
| LAN |
Local Area Network - a general term for a means
of connecting computers together on one site so that they can share information
- Econet and Ethernet are examples of LANs |
| LaTeX |
a set of resources which make using the TeX
typesetting language easier and more productive |
| LCD |
Liquid Crystal Display - a display technology
used for calculators, digital camera monitors and early portable computers, in
the latter case now generally superseded by DSTN and TFT technologies |
| Leading |
this refers to the spacing between lines in
printed text - the term comes from the days of mechanical typesetting where
bits of lead strip were used to separate one line from the next |
| Leafname |
the last part of the pathname, i.e. the name of
the file or directory being referred to |
| Leased line |
any circuit or combination of circuits
designated to be at the exclusive disposal of a given user |
| Letter box mode |
there are some monitors that were never
designed to display screen modes of the like of Acorn modes 12, 15, etc - some
are completely incapable of displaying them whereas others can display them but
with a somewhat reduced vertical height, the shape being likened to the mouth
of a letter box |
| Linker |
when using a compiler, this is the program that
joins the object code from various sub-programs, including the library
routines, to form the final executable machine code program |
| Lisp |
a high level computer language often associated
with artificial intelligence programming |
| Login |
connecting to a computer involves typing a user
name and a password before access is given - you can log into remote computers
on the Internet using Telnet or FTP |
| Logoff |
disconnect from a host system |
| Low level language |
a language which involves programming the
computer at the level of one written instruction (or mnemonic) for each machine
code instruction |
| Lurker |
someone who reads Usenet articles but makes no
contribution and is therefore transparent to other users - sometimes used as a
derogatory term but there are, by contrast, those who just have to say
something about every topic, whether it adds anything or not! |