National Teaching and Learning Change ProgrammeInformation and Communication Technology:
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• pop-up menu
  A menu that appears on the screen wherever the user happens to have positioned the cursor. It may be called up as the result of pressing a hot key, or because the program needs to offer the user a choice as a result of what is being done at that instant.
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• POP3
  Post Office Protocol 3. Defines the transfer of email between computer systems. It allows users to download email from a server to their own computer.
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• portal
  Also known as an internet portal, it is a website designed to be a first port of call for a user logging on to the internet. It will be designed to carry links to pages the user is likely to want to access, and may even be customisable so that the user can specify which links he or she wants to see.
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• portrait orientation
  Portrait orientation is when a document or image is higher than it is wide.
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• post
  To post a message is to send it to a bulletin board so that others can read it.
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• postfix notation
  Mathematicians normally use infix notation (where the operators are placed between the operands, such as A+B). Prefix notation places the operator first (such as +AB) while postfix notation places the operator last (such as AB+).
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• pre-printed stationery
  In printing, pre-printed stationery has certain fixed information already printed on each sheet so that the computer can fill in the gaps. This increases the speed of printing and improves the presentation. The paper may be cut sheets or continuous stationery. Common examples are customer accounts for gas and electricity, and computer-printed cheques.
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• prefix notation
  Mathematicians normally use infix notation (where the operators are placed between the operands, such as A+B). Prefix notation places the operator first (such as +AB) while postfix notation places the operator last (such as AB+).
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• presentation
  A presentation is a series of slides, produced by multimedia presentation software. Presentations are usually displayed on a large monitor which the whole audience can see, or projected on to a large screen by a projector.
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• preview
  To preview a document is to see how it would appear when it is printed before you actually send it to the printer.
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• primary key
  A key is the field (the key field) within a record used to identify the record, e.g. a bank account number identifies a customer
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• print
  To send data to the printer to produce a hard copy.
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• print buffer
  An area of computer memory where data to be printed is held until the printer is ready to print it. It enables a program to continue operating without waiting for each character to be printed, as it can send its data to the buffer. The buffer is normally managed by the operating system. When a printer, which works much slower than a computer, is ready to print the next data, it can signal this by means of an interrupt to the operating system. The operating system will remove the data from the buffer and send it to the printer.
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• print cartridge
  A print cartridge is used to provide ink for a printer.
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• print head
  Some smaller printers use a moving print head which travels backwards and forwards across the paper and carries the printing mechanism.
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• print job
  Each set of data to be printed is known as a print job.
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• print preview
  To preview a document is to see how it would appear when it is printed before you actually send it to the printer.
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• print queue
  A print queue is a list of work waiting to be printed by a printer spooler. Normally it is a list of the files holding data ready for printing. Each file will hold the data from a particular task which will be sent to the printer by the printer spooler when the printer is free. A task could be a single document or a large batch of commercial documents.
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• print spooler
  A program which stores data ready to be printed. Each set of data to be printed is known as a print job. When the print job has been received from a program and is complete, the print spooler can send this data to the printer. Several programs or terminals can send data at the same time for printing, because the data are stored in files by the printer spooler and sent to the printer when appropriate. A printer spooler is normally part of the operating system.
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• printed circuit board (PCB)
  A printed circuit board (PCB) is a board that contains electronic circuitry.