BMG101 Intro Comp Internet 311017

Yashwantrao Chavan
Maharashtra Open University
Digital Art
B. Sc. in Media Graphics and Animation

BMG 101: Introduction to Computers
& Internet
YASHWANTRAO
CHAVAN
MAHARASHTRA
OPEN
UNIVERSITY
T97:B.Sc. in Media Graphics and Animation [B.Sc. (MGA)]

2010 Pattern: Course code: BMG101
INTRODUCTION TO COMPUTERS
AND INTERNET
YASHWANTRAO CHAVAN MAHARASHTRA OPEN UNIVERSITY

Dnyangangotri, Near Gangapur Dam, Nashik 422 222, Maharshtra
YASHWANTRAO CHAVAN MAHARASHTRA OPEN UNIVERSITY
Vice-Chancellor : Prof. (Dr.) E. Vayunandan
School of Continuing Education School Council
Dr Rajendra Vadnere, Dr Surya Gunjal Smt Jyoti Shetty.

Chairman, Director Professor Principal
School of Continuing Education School of Agriculture Science S.P. More College, Panwel
YCMOU, Nashik YCMOU, Nashik Dr Abhay Patil
Dr Jaydeep Naikam Dr Pranod Khandare Assistant Professor
Professor Assistant Professor School of Health Science
School of Continuing Education School of Computer Science YCMOU, Nashik
YCMOU, Nashik YCMOU, Nashik Shri Asvin Sonone,
Dr Rucha Gujar Dr Latika Ajbani Associate Professor
Assistant Professor Assistant Professor FTII Pune
School of Continuing Education School of Commerce & Mgt Shri P V Patil
YCMOU, Nashik YCMOU, Nashik Dy District Voc Education &
Shri Ram Thakar Dr Sunanda More Training Officer,
Assistant Professor Assistant Professor DVET, Nashik
School of Continuing Education School of Science & Tech. Shri Shankar Goenka
YCMOU, Nashik YCMOU, Nashik Country Head
Wow Fafctors Ind Pvt Ltd, Delhi
Author Content Editor Instruct. Tech. Editor

and Coordinator (Dev.)
Madhura Bhagat (all but Unit 10) Ravi H Tikate (all but Unit 10) Dr Rajendra Vadnere
MCE Society's College of Visual MCE Society's College of Visual Director
Effect Design and Arts, Pune Effect Design and Arts, Pune School of Continuing Education
Shailaja M. Pimputkar (Unit 10) Santosh Raskar (Unit 10) Y.C.M.O. U.
Srajan Institute of Multimedia, Srajan Institute of Multimedia, Nashik
Gaming and Animation, Pune Gaming and Animation, Pune
Production
Shri. Anand Yadav
Manager, Print Production Centre, YCMOU, Nashik
© 2017, Yashwantrao Chavan Maharashtra Open Univesity, Nashik

 First Publication : June 2017
 Publication No. :
 Typesetting :
 Printer :
 Published by : Dr. Dinesh Bhonde, Registrar, Y. C. M. Open University, Nashik - 422 222.
B-16-17-93 (BTH331)
BMG 101: Introduction to Computers and
Internet
Credit 1:
Unit 1 : Introduction to Computers
Unit 2 : Computer Organisation
Unit 3 : Software Applications
Credit 2:
Unit 4 : Input to Computers
Unit 5 : Data Processing
Unit 6 : Output Devices
Credit 3:
Unit 7 : Data Storage
Unit 8 : Internet Basics
Credit 4:
Unit 9 : The Study of Internet
Unit 10 : Microsoft Word 2007
CONTENTS
UNIT 1: INTRODUCTION TO COMPUTERS ..................................................................... 17
1.0 BEFORE WE BEGIN ........................................................................................................................... 17
1.1 UNIT OBJECTIVES ............................................................................................................................. 17
1.2 What is a computer? ........................................................................................................................ 17
1.3 What makes a computer powerful? ................................................................................................. 18
1.3.1 Speed: ............................................................................................................................................. 18
1.3.2 Reliability: ....................................................................................................................................... 19
1.3.3 Accuracy .......................................................................................................................................... 19
1.3.4 Storage ............................................................................................................................................ 19
1.3.5 Diligence.......................................................................................................................................... 19
1.3.6 Versatility ........................................................................................................................................ 19
1.3.7 Power of Remembering .................................................................................................................. 19
1.3.8 No “intelligence” ............................................................................................................................. 19
1.3.9 No Feelings ...................................................................................................................................... 20
1.4 THE HISTORY OF COMPUTERS .......................................................................................................... 20
1.4.1 Types of calculating Machines ........................................................................................................ 20
1.4.2 Napier’s Bones ................................................................................................................................ 20
1.4.3 Slide Rule......................................................................................................................................... 22
1.4.4 Pascal’s adding & subtracting machines ......................................................................................... 23
1.4.5 Leibniz’s multiplication and division machines ............................................................................... 24
1.4.6 Babbage’s analytical engine ............................................................................................................ 26
1.4.7 Mechanical calculator ..................................................................................................................... 27
1.5 Electrical Calculator ......................................................................................................................... 28
BMG101: Introduction to Computers Page 1

1.5.1 Modern Electronic Calculator ......................................................................................................... 29
1.6 Computer Generations..................................................................................................................... 32
1.6.1 First generation computers (1939-1954): Vacuum Tube ................................................................ 32
1.6.2 Second generation computers (1954-1959): Transistors: .............................................................. 33
1.6.3 Third generation computers (1959-1971): IC ................................................................................. 34
1.6.4 Fourth generation (1939-1954): Microprocessors.......................................................................... 36
1.6.5 Fifth generation computers (1991 & beyond) ................................................................................ 36
1.7 Types of Computers ......................................................................................................................... 38
1.8 Workstations............................................................................................................................... 39
1.9 Mainframe .................................................................................................................................. 40
1.9.1 Differences between Mainframe and supercomputers .................................................................. 42
1.9.2 Characteristics of Mainframe.......................................................................................................... 42
1.10 Supercomputer .............................................................................................................................. 43
1.11 Servers ........................................................................................................................................... 45
Hardware requirement ............................................................................................................................ 46
1.12 Summary........................................................................................................................................ 47
1.13 KEY TERMS ..................................................................................................................................... 47
1.14 END QUESTIONS............................................................................................................................. 48
1.15 REFERENCES ................................................................................................................................... 48
UNIT 2: COMPUTER ORGANIZATION .............................................................................. 50
2.0 BEFORE WE BEGIN ........................................................................................................................... 50
2.1 Unit Objectives ................................................................................................................................ 50
2.2 Basic Computer Operations ............................................................................................................. 50
2.2.1. INPUT ............................................................................................................................................. 53
2.2.2 PROCESSING .................................................................................................................................... 54

2.2.3 CONTROL......................................................................................................................................... 55
2.2.4 OUTPUT .......................................................................................................................................... 55
2.2.5 STORAGE ........................................................................................................................................ 56
2.3 Functional Unit ................................................................................................................................ 56
2.3.1 Arithmetic and Logic Unit (ALU)...................................................................................................... 56
2.3.2 Control Unit .................................................................................................................................... 57
2.3.3 Central Processing Unit (CPU) ......................................................................................................... 57
2.4 MEMORY SYSTEM IN A COMPUTER ................................................................................................. 58
2.5 CAPACITY OF PRIMARY MEMORY .................................................................................................... 59
2.5.1. Primary Memory / Volatile Memory:............................................................................................. 59
2.5.2 Secondary Memory / Non Volatile Memory: .................................................................................. 59
2.6 SECONDARY STORAGE ..................................................................................................................... 60
2.6.1 Magnetic Tape ................................................................................................................................ 61
2.6.2 Magnetic Disc.................................................................................................................................. 61
2.6.3 Floppy disc ...................................................................................................................................... 61
2.6.4 Optical Disc ..................................................................................................................................... 61
2.7 SUMMARY ....................................................................................................................................... 62
2.8 KEY TERMS ....................................................................................................................................... 63
2.9 END QUESTIONS .............................................................................................................................. 63
2.10 REFERENCES ................................................................................................................................... 64
UNIT 3: SOFTWARE APPLICATIONS ................................................................................ 65
3.0 BEFORE WE BEGIN ........................................................................................................................... 65
3.1 UNIT OBJECTIVES ............................................................................................................................. 66
3.2 WORD PROCESSING ......................................................................................................................... 66
3.2.1 MAIN FEATURES OF WORD PROCESSING ....................................................................................... 66

3.2.1 The ‘Create File’ Menu .................................................................................................................... 68
3.2.2 The Format Menu ........................................................................................................................... 69
3.2.3 The Print Option.............................................................................................................................. 69
3.3 SPREADSHEETS ................................................................................................................................ 71
3.4 HTML EDITOR ................................................................................................................................... 73
3.5 DESKTOP PUBLISHING ...................................................................................................................... 74
3.6 TYPES (LEVELS) OF SOFTWARE ......................................................................................................... 74
3.6.1 System Software ............................................................................................................................. 74
3.6.2 Programming Software ................................................................................................................... 75
3.6.3 Application Software....................................................................................................................... 75
3.7 DATABASE........................................................................................................................................ 77
3.8 QUERIES ........................................................................................................................................... 84
3.9 GRAPHICS PROGRAMS ..................................................................................................................... 85
3.10 DRAWING PROGRAMS ................................................................................................................... 88
3.11 PAINT ............................................................................................................................................. 89
3.11.1 History ........................................................................................................................................... 89
3.11.2 Windows 7 and later ..................................................................................................................... 90
3.11.3 Future............................................................................................................................................ 90
3.11.4 Features ........................................................................................................................................ 90
3.11.5 Support for indexed palettes ........................................................................................................ 91
3.12 Animation and Video Programs ..................................................................................................... 92
3.12.1 Computer Animation ................................................................................................................... 92
List of 2D animation software .................................................................................................................. 93
List of 3D animation programs................................................................................................................. 95
3.12.2 Computer-assisted vs. computer-generated ................................................................................ 96

3.12.3 Video Programs ............................................................................................................................. 97
3.12.4 List of video editing software........................................................................................................ 97
3.13 Presentation Programs .................................................................................................................. 99
3.13.1 Features ........................................................................................................................................ 99
3.14 Communication Programs ............................................................................................................ 100
3.14.1 History ......................................................................................................................................... 100
3.14.2 Chat ............................................................................................................................................. 101
3.15 The File Transfer Protocol (FTP) ................................................................................................... 101
3.16 Chat and Instant Messaging ......................................................................................................... 102
3.16.1 Chatiquette ................................................................................................................................. 103
3.16.2 Instant messaging (IM) ............................................................................................................... 103
3.17 Project Management Programs.................................................................................................... 104
3.17.1 Predecessors ............................................................................................................................... 104
3.17.2 Emergence of the ‘project management’ term and modernized techniques ............................ 105
3.17.3 The first project management products and associations.......................................................... 105
3.17.4 SaaS and cloud-based project management software ............................................................... 105
3.17.5 Tasks and activities ..................................................................................................................... 106
3.17.6 Types ........................................................................................................................................... 107
3.18 Integrated Software ..................................................................................................................... 108
3.19 Summary...................................................................................................................................... 109
3.20 Key Terms .................................................................................................................................... 111
3.21 End Questions .............................................................................................................................. 114
3.22 References ................................................................................................................................... 115
UNIT 4: INPUT TO COMPUTERS ...................................................................................... 116
4.0 BEFORE WE BEGIN ......................................................................................................................... 116

4.1 UNIT OBJECTIVES ........................................................................................................................... 116
4.2 TYPES OF INPUT HARDWARE ......................................................................................................... 116
4.3 KEYBOARD ..................................................................................................................................... 117
4.3.1 Types of Keyboards ....................................................................................................................... 117
4.3.2 Keyboard Layout ........................................................................................................................... 119
4.3.3 Key Types ...................................................................................................................................... 120
4.4 POINTING DEVICES......................................................................................................................... 122
4.4.1 Mouse ........................................................................................................................................... 123
4.4.2 Trackball ........................................................................................................................................ 124
4.4.3 Touchpad ...................................................................................................................................... 124
4.4.4 Light Pens ...................................................................................................................................... 124
4.4.5 Touch Screens ............................................................................................................................... 124
4.4.6 Digitizers and Graphic Tablet ........................................................................................................ 124
4.5 GAME DEVICES ............................................................................................................................... 125
4.6 POINT-OF-SALE (POS) TERMINAL ................................................................................................... 127
4.7 WHAT IS MULTIMEDIA? ................................................................................................................. 127
4.7.1 Multimedia Tools .......................................................................................................................... 128
4.7.2 Elements of Multimedia................................................................................................................ 129
4.8 SOUND INPUT ................................................................................................................................ 133
4.9 VOICE INPUT .................................................................................................................................. 133
4.9.1 Changing Voice to Data ................................................................................................................. 134
4.9.2 Types of Voice Recognition Systems ............................................................................................. 134
4.10 VIDEO INPUT ................................................................................................................................ 135
4.11 DATA AUTOMATION .................................................................................................................... 135
4.12 GENERAL DEVICES ........................................................................................................................ 136

4.13 OPTICAL CHARACTER RECOGNITION SOFTWARE.......................................................................... 137
4.14 SUMMARY ................................................................................................................................... 138
4.15 END QUESTIONS........................................................................................................................... 139
UNIT 5 DATA PROCESSING ............................................................................................... 141
5.0 BEFORE WE BEGIN ......................................................................................................................... 141
5.1 UNIT OBJECTIVES ........................................................................................................................... 141
5.2 WHAT IS PROCESSING? .................................................................................................................. 141
5.3 processing digital data ................................................................................................................... 141
5.4 DIGITAL codes ................................................................................................................................ 143
5.5 parity ............................................................................................................................................. 144
5.6 machine cycles & speed ................................................................................................................. 145
5.6.1 Components of a simple Digital System ....................................................................................... 146
5.6.2 How does the System execute a program? .................................................................................. 146
5.6.3 Initiating the cycle ......................................................................................................................... 147
5.7 memory addresses ......................................................................................................................... 149
5.7.1 Physical addresses ........................................................................................................................ 149
5.7.2 Logical addresses .......................................................................................................................... 150
5.7.3 Contents of each memory location ............................................................................................... 150
5.7.4 Memory Address and size of Memory .......................................................................................... 150
5.8 processor speed ............................................................................................................................. 151
5.8.1 Historical milestones and current records .................................................................................... 151
5.9 physical components ..................................................................................................................... 152
5.9.1 Microprocessor ............................................................................................................................. 152
5.9.2 Random-access memory ............................................................................................................... 153
5.10 motherboard ............................................................................................................................... 155

5.10.1 Design ......................................................................................................................................... 156
5.11 INDUSTRY STANDARD ARCHITECTURE (ISA) ................................................................................. 157
5.11.1 8-Bit ISA Slots .............................................................................................................................. 157
5.11.2 Peripheral Component Interconnect (PCI) Slots ......................................................................... 157
5.11.3 Memory Slots .............................................................................................................................. 159
5.12 CONNECTORS ............................................................................................................................... 160
5.12.1 RAM Connectors ......................................................................................................................... 160
5.12.2 Input-Output Connectors ............................................................................................................ 160
5.12.3 Power connections ..................................................................................................................... 161
5.13 PROCESSOR SOCKET ..................................................................................................................... 162
5.14 summary ...................................................................................................................................... 163
5.15 key terms ..................................................................................................................................... 164
5.13 end questions .............................................................................................................................. 164
5.14 REFERENCES ................................................................................................................................. 165
UNIT 6: OUTPUT DEVICES ................................................................................................. 167
6.0 BEFORE WE BEGIN ......................................................................................................................... 167
6.1 UNIT OBJECTIVES ........................................................................................................................... 167
6.2 forms of output.............................................................................................................................. 167
6.2.1 Display devices .............................................................................................................................. 168
6.2.2 Input/output ................................................................................................................................. 168
6.2.3 Types of output ............................................................................................................................. 168
6.2.4 Graphics (Visual) ........................................................................................................................... 168
6.2.5 Tactile............................................................................................................................................ 169
6.2.6 Audio ............................................................................................................................................. 169
6.2.7 Examples of Output Devices ......................................................................................................... 169

6.3 printer............................................................................................................................................ 170
6.3.1 Types of printers ........................................................................................................................... 170
6.3.2 Technology .................................................................................................................................... 171
6.3.3 Attributes ...................................................................................................................................... 177
6.4 screen DISPLAY .............................................................................................................................. 179
Technologies .......................................................................................................................................... 179
6.4.1 Cathode ray tube .......................................................................................................................... 179
6.4.2 Liquid crystal display ..................................................................................................................... 181
6.4.3 Organic light-emitting diode (OLED) ............................................................................................. 182
Measurements of performance ............................................................................................................. 182
Additional features ................................................................................................................................ 185
6.5 Speakers ........................................................................................................................................ 186
6.6 summery ........................................................................................................................................ 188
6.7 key terms ....................................................................................................................................... 188
6.8 REFERENCES ................................................................................................................................... 189
UNIT 7: DATA STORAGE .................................................................................................... 191
7.0 INTRODUCTION.............................................................................................................................. 191
7.1 UNIT OBJECTIVES: .......................................................................................................................... 191
Cylinder Head Sector method ................................................................................................................ 195
UNIT 8: INTERNET BASICS ................................................................................................ 212
8.0 INTRODUCTION.............................................................................................................................. 212
8.1 UNIT OBJECTIVES ........................................................................................................................... 213
8.2 Introduction to the Internet ........................................................................................................... 213
8.2.1 Interoperable ................................................................................................................................ 214
8.2.2 Packet Switching ........................................................................................................................... 215

8.2.3 Data Network ................................................................................................................................ 216
8.2.4 Connecting to the Internet ........................................................................................................... 217
8.2.5 Internet Services: E-Mail, Telnet and WWW ................................................................................ 220
8.3 World Wide Web (WWW) .............................................................................................................. 222
8.3.1 Universal Resource Locator (URL) ................................................................................................. 223
8.3.2 Gopher: Its Origin.......................................................................................................................... 224
8.3.3 Stagnation of gopher .................................................................................................................... 225
8.3.4 Availability of Gopher Today ......................................................................................................... 225
8.3.6 Gopher Clients .............................................................................................................................. 227
8.3.7 Gopher to HTTP Gateways ............................................................................................................ 228
8.3.8 Gopher Characteristics.................................................................................................................. 228
8.3.9 Technical Details and Protocol ...................................................................................................... 228
URL Links and Related Technology ........................................................................................................ 230
8.3.10 Gopher Server Software ............................................................................................................. 230
8.4 hiSTORY OF THE INTERNET ............................................................................................................. 231
8.4.1 IP Addresses .................................................................................................................................. 233
8.4.2 Domain Name ............................................................................................................................... 233
8.4.3 Need to Register Your Domain Name ........................................................................................... 234
8.4.4. Repeater ...................................................................................................................................... 234
8.4.5 Bridge ............................................................................................................................................ 234
8.4.6 Router ........................................................................................................................................... 235
8.4.7 Brouter .......................................................................................................................................... 235
8.4.8 Firewall.......................................................................................................................................... 236
8.4.9 Ethernet: Packet-filtering Firewalls............................................................................................... 238
8.4.10 Search Engine .............................................................................................................................. 243

8.5 SUMMARY ..................................................................................................................................... 247
8.6 key terms ....................................................................................................................................... 247
8.7 end questions ................................................................................................................................ 248
8.8 REFERENCES ................................................................................................................................... 248
UNIT 9: THE STUDY OF THE INTERNET ....................................................................... 249
9.0 INTRODUCTION.............................................................................................................................. 249
9.1 UNIT OBJECTIVES ........................................................................................................................... 249
9.2 WEB DIRECTORIES.......................................................................................................................... 249
9.2.1 Range of Listing ............................................................................................................................. 250
9.2.2 Human-Edited Directories ............................................................................................................ 250
9.2.3 Bid for Position Directories ........................................................................................................... 251
9.2.4 Automated Submission of Web Directories .................................................................................. 251
9.2.5 Working of a Web Directory ......................................................................................................... 251
9.3 SEARCH ENGINES BASICS ............................................................................................................... 255
9.3.1 Different Search Engines ............................................................................................................... 256
9.4 aLTAVISTA ...................................................................................................................................... 266
9.4.1 Alta Vista Search Home Page ........................................................................................................ 267
9.4.2 Searching with AltaVista ............................................................................................................... 267
9.4.3 AltaVista Search Features ............................................................................................................. 267
9.5 EXCITE ............................................................................................................................................ 268
9.6 Hotbot ........................................................................................................................................... 270
9.7 Lycos .............................................................................................................................................. 270
9.7.1 Lycos Home Page .......................................................................................................................... 271
9.7.2 Lycos Search .................................................................................................................................. 271
9.7.3 Lycos Features............................................................................................................................... 271

9.8 web crawler ................................................................................................................................... 271
9.8.1 Overview ....................................................................................................................................... 272
9.8.2 Crawling Policies ........................................................................................................................... 272
9.8.3 Selection policy ............................................................................................................................. 273
9.8.4Restricting followed links ............................................................................................................... 273
9.8.5 URL normalization ......................................................................................................................... 273
9.8.6 Path-ascending crawling ............................................................................................................... 273
9.8.7 Focused crawling .......................................................................................................................... 274
9.8.8 Academic-focused crawler ............................................................................................................ 274
9.8.9 Re-visit policy ................................................................................................................................ 274
9.8.10 Politeness policy ......................................................................................................................... 276
9.8.11 Parallelization policy ................................................................................................................... 277
9.8.12 Web Crawler Architectures ......................................................................................................... 277
9.9 META-SEARCH ENGINES ................................................................................................................. 279
9.9.1 Advantages ................................................................................................................................... 280
9.9.2 Disadvantages ............................................................................................................................... 280
9.9.3 Operation ...................................................................................................................................... 281
9.9.4 Spamdexing................................................................................................................................... 282
9.9.5 Example: ProFusion....................................................................................................................... 283
9.10 web portal ................................................................................................................................... 284
9.10.1 History:........................................................................................................................................ 284
9.10.2 Types of Portals:.......................................................................................................................... 285
9.11 my yahoo ..................................................................................................................................... 288
9.12 SEARCH strategies ........................................................................................................................ 288
9.13 beyond the BASICS: THINKING CRITICALLY ABOUT WEBSITES ................................................... 290

9.14 EVALUATION OF INFORMATION SOURCES ................................................................................... 291
9.15 how to be net savvy ..................................................................................................................... 292
9.16 SummAry ..................................................................................................................................... 293
9.17 key terms ..................................................................................................................................... 294
9.18 end questions .............................................................................................................................. 294
UNIT 10: MICROSOFT WORD XP 2007 ......................................................................... 295
10.0 BEFORE WE BEGIN ....................................................................................................................... 295
10.1 UNIT OBJECTIVES: ........................................................................................................................ 295
10.2 MICROSOFT WORD ...................................................................................................................... 295
10.2.1 Title Bar ....................................................................................................................................... 296
10.2.2 Menu Bar .................................................................................................................................... 296
10.2.3 Ruler ............................................................................................................................................ 297
10.2.4 Different Types of Document View ............................................................................................. 297
10.2.5 Area for Text ............................................................................................................................... 299
10.3 imPORTANT OPTIONS .................................................................................................................. 299
10.3.3 Selecting the Text by Highlighting............................................................................................... 302
10.3.4 Choosing Menu Commands by Using the Alt Key ....................................................................... 302
10.3.5 Shortcut Notations ...................................................................................................................... 303
10.3.6 Starting a New Paragraph ........................................................................................................... 303
10.3.7 Exiting Microsoft Word ............................................................................................................... 303
10.4 MICROSOFT WORD: BASIC FEATURES .......................................................................................... 304
10.4.1 Typing and Using the Backspace Key .......................................................................................... 304
10.4.2 Delete Key ................................................................................................................................... 304
10.4.3 Inserting Text .............................................................................................................................. 305
10.5 SOME BASIC FEAUTRES ................................................................................................................ 309

10.5.1 Open File ..................................................................................................................................... 309
10.5.2 Cut and Paste .............................................................................................................................. 309
10.5.3 Copy and Paste ........................................................................................................................... 310
10.5.4 Spell Check .................................................................................................................................. 311
10.5.5 Find and Replace ......................................................................................................................... 312
10.5.6 Font Size: ..................................................................................................................................... 313
10.6 working with paragraphs ............................................................................................................. 315
10.6.1 Space Before and Space After ..................................................................................................... 316
10.6.2 Line Spacing ................................................................................................................................ 317
10.6.3 First-Line Indent .......................................................................................................................... 317
10.6.4 Indentation ................................................................................................................................. 318
10.6.5 Alignment.................................................................................................................................... 318
10.6.6 Hanging Indent............................................................................................................................ 320
10.6.7 Save File and Exit MS Word ........................................................................................................ 321
10.7 TAB KEY, BUTTETING NUMBERING UNDO, REDO, PRINTING AND HELP ....................................... 321
10.7.1 Tab Key........................................................................................................................................ 321
10.7.2 Bullets and Numbering ............................................................................................................... 322
10.7.3 Undo and Redo ........................................................................................................................... 324
10.7.4 Save File ...................................................................................................................................... 325
10.7.5 File Close ..................................................................................................................................... 325
10.7.6 Open New File ............................................................................................................................. 325
10.7.7 Printing........................................................................................................................................ 325
10.7.8 Print Your Document .................................................................................................................. 325
10.7.9 Alternate Method: Printing by Using Short Key Command ........................................................ 325
10.7.10 Alternate Method: Printing by Using the Icon .......................................................................... 326

10.8 tables ........................................................................................................................................... 326
10.8.1 Creating a Table .......................................................................................................................... 326
10.8.2 Moving Around a Table ............................................................................................................... 327
10.8.3 Entering Text into a Table ........................................................................................................... 327
10.8.4 Selecting a Row and Highlighting (Marking Bold) the Text ......................................................... 328
10.8.5 Right –Aligning Text .................................................................................................................... 328
10.8.6 Adding a New Row at the End of the Table ................................................................................ 329
10.8.7 Adding a Row within the Table ................................................................................................... 329
10.8.8 Resizing the Columns .................................................................................................................. 329
10.8.9Adding a New Column to a Table................................................................................................. 330
10.8.10 Sorting a Table .......................................................................................................................... 331
10.8.11 Sum Function ............................................................................................................................ 332
10.8.12 Deleting a Row .......................................................................................................................... 332
10.8.13 Deleting a Column..................................................................................................................... 332
10.8.14 Merge Cell ................................................................................................................................. 333
10.8.15 Recalculate ................................................................................................................................ 333
10.8.16 Table Headings .......................................................................................................................... 333
10.8.17 Converting Text to Table ........................................................................................................... 333
10.8.18. Splitting a Table ....................................................................................................................... 334
10.8.19. Table Auto Format ................................................................................................................... 335
10.8.20. Save File ................................................................................................................................... 335
10.9 SummAry ..................................................................................................................................... 336
10.10 key terms ................................................................................................................................... 337
10.11 end questions ............................................................................................................................ 338
10.12 REFERENCES ............................................................................................................................... 338

UNIT 1: INTRODUCTION TO COMPUTERS
1.0 BEFORE WE BEGIN

Computers have touched every part of our lives: the way we work, the way we learn, the way we
live, even the way we play. It almost is impossible to go through a single day without encountering a
computer, a device dependent on a computer, information produced by a computer, or a word that
was introduced or whose meaning has changed with the advent of computers. Because of the
significance of computers in today’s world, it is important to be computer literate.Being computer
literate means you have knowledge and understanding of computers and their uses.
A computer is an electronic machine, operating under the control of instructions stored in its own
memory, that can accept data, manipulate the data according to specified rules, produce results, and
store the results for future use. Computers process data to create information
Data is a collection of raw unprocessed facts, figures, and symbols. Information is data that is
organized, meaningful, and useful. To process data into information, a computer uses hardware and
software. Hardware is the electric, electronic, and mechanical equipment that makes up a computer.
Software is the series of instructions that tells the hardware how to perform tasks.
1.1 UNIT OBJECTIVES

After going through this unit, you will be able to:
• Discuss the basic functions of a computer

• Explain the history of the computer
• Elaborate on the factorsthat make computers powerful
• Describe computer generations
• Explain mainframe
• Elaborate on Servers
• Explain the concept of Supercomputer
• Elaborate on Workstations
1.2 WHAT IS A COMPUTER?

What is a Computer? Computer is an electronic device that is designed to work with
Information. The term computer is derived from the Latin term ‘computare’, this means
to calculate or programmable machine. A computer is a device that can receive, process and store
data. They are used as tools in every part of society together with the Internet. Computers nowadays
are complex; there are a lot of different components inside them, and they all serve different
purposes. They all need to work together for the computer to work knowing how a computer works
makes it easier to use a computer by being able to understand how a computer will respond.

Fig 1.01: Parts of a Computer
CHECK YOUR PROGRESS

What is a computer?
What does a computer do?
1.3 WHAT MAKES A COMPUTER POWERFUL?

A computer is a powerful tool because it is able to perform the information processing cycle
operations (input, process, output, and storage) with amazing speed, reliability, and accuracy; store
huge amounts of data and information; and communicate with other computers. Computers allow
users to generate correct information quickly, hold the information so it is available at any time, and
share the information with other computer users.
1.3.1 Speed:
It has a very speed of executing instruction. CPU of a computer can perform more than 10
million operations per second. All the instructions are executed in accordance with a clock, whose
frequency is measured in Mhz. Normally, 3-4 cycles of this clock are required to execute one
instruction. Recent computers have a speed of about 300 Mhz i.e one cycle of approx.3 X 10-9 Sec.
This means that it can execute an instruction in about 10 nanosec (10X 10 -8 Sec). In other words it
can execute 100 million instructions in one second. But the overall speed of performance of a
computer decreases due to slower Input and Output devices, interfaced to CPU.

1.3.2 Reliability:
The reliability of results processed by a computer is very high. If a program is executed any
number of times with the same set of data, every time the results would be the same.
1.3.3 Accuracy
The accuracy of results computed by a computer is consistently high. Due to digital techniques
the error is very small. The errors in computing may be due to logical mistakes by a programmer or
due to inaccurate data.
1.3.4 Storage
The speed with which computers can process large quantities of data/ Information, the size of
input so also the output is quite large. The size of information to be stored further increases due to
graphic applications. All this information is to be stored in auxiliary memory i.e Hard Disk fitted
inside the computer. Hard Disks now days have a storage capacity as large as 4 GB. The size of
internal primary memory (RAM) has also been increases a lot to about 64 MB.
1.3.5 Diligence
A computer is free from tiredness, lack of concentration, fatigue, etc. It can work for hours
without creating any error. If millions of calculations are to be performed, a computer will perform
every calculation with the same accuracy. Due to this capability it overpowers human being in routine
type of work.
1.3.6 Versatility
Computers are capable of performing almost task provided the task can be reduced to a series of
logical steps so that an appropriate program in a suitable language can be fed to a computer memory.
Of course, the input and output devices should be capable of performing the desired task. Because of
these capabilities, a number of processes can be automated with the help of a computer.
Apart from those outlined above, computer has some other features also. They are automatic to a
great extent i.e they run with very little human interference. They can work endless at the same level
of efficiency and productivity. Modern computers are becoming more and more user friendly i.e
computer itself helps the user at every stage. Visual display, limited but effective use of natural
language like English and appropriate software have made it very easy to operate computers
1.3.7 Power of Remembering

Computer has the power of storing any amount of information or data. Any information
can be stored and recalled as long as you require it, for any numbers of years. It depends
entirely upon you how much data you want to store in a computer and when to lose or
retrieve these data.
1.3.8 No “intelligence”

Computer is a dumb machine and it cannot do any work without instruction from the user. It
performs the instructions at tremendous speed and with accuracy. It is you to decide what you want to
do and in what sequence. So a computer cannot take its own decision as you can.
1.3.9 No Feelings
It does not have feelings or emotion, taste, knowledge and experience. Thus it does not get tired
even after long hours of work. It does not distinguish between users.
CHECK YOUR PROGRESS

What are various specific features which the computers enjoy over human beings?
What is meant by diligence in reference to the features of computers
Explain how computers are versatile
1.4 THE HISTORY OF COMPUTERS

Abacus is known to be the first mechanical calculating device, which was used to be performed
addition and subtraction easily and speedily. Abacus is made up of wooden frame in which rod where
fitted across with rounds beads sliding on the rod. It id dividing into two parts called ‘Heaven’ and
‘Earth’. Heaven was the upper part and Earth was the lower one. Thus any no. can be represented by
placing the beads at proper place.
1.4.1 Types of calculating Machines

The first step in the direction of automatic calculation was taken in 1623, when the German
astronomer Wilhelm Schickard (1592‑1635) constructed his "calculating clock", as he called it. This
machine was capable of executing all four basic arithmetical operations: addition and subtraction it
could perform purely mechanically, while multiplication and division required as well several
interventions by the operator between entering the numbers and reading off the result.
They can be divided into two categories-
• Adding Machines
• Calculating Machines
1.4.2 Napier’s Bones

Napier's bones, also called Napier's rods, are numbered rods which can be used to perform
multiplication of any number by a number 2-9. By placing "bones" corresponding to the multiplier on
the left side and the bones corresponding to the digits of the multiplicand next to it to the right, and
product can be read off simply by adding pairs of numbers (with appropriate carries as needed) in the
row determined by the multiplier. This process was published by Napier in 1617 a book titled
Rabdologia, so the process is also called rabdology.
The 'bones' consist of a set of rectangular rods, each marked with a counting number at the top,
and the multiples of that number down their lengths. Multiples are written across the diagonal of a
square.
Fig 1.02: Napier’s Bones
To multiply one number by another you need to align the digits as they are positioned in the
given number against the row of multiples as shown. You look for a number that you are multiplying
your large number by and read the results from right to left by adding the digits in each square
diagonally in the appropriate row. Multiplication is thus reduced to addition.
For example: to multiply 249 by 9, you need first to position your rods to get the first rod
followed by rods beginning with 2, 4, and 9 aligned (or put into a frame).
Fig 1.03: Napier’s bone’s exaples

Add the numbers diagonally in the 9 th row and look from right to left:
1.
And then diagonally
6+8=14 - write 4 and remember 1 to take to the next row
8+3=11, add 1 from thee previous and remember 1 to take to the next row
1 and add one from the previous row

row.
Hence the result is 2241.
You can do incredibly long calculations using Napier bones.
1.4.3 Slide Rule

The slide rule is actually made of three bars that are fixed toge
together.
ther. The sliding center bar is
sandwiched by the outer bars which are fixed with respect to each other. The metal "window" is
inserted over the slide rule to act as a place holder. A cursor is fixed in the center of the "window" to
allow for accurate readings.
The scales (A-D)

D) are labeled on the left-hand
left hand side of the slide rule. The number of scales on a
slide rule vary depending on the number of mathematical functions the slide rule can perform.
Multiplication and division are performed using the C and D scales. Square and square root are
performed with the A and B scales. The numbers are marked according to a logarithmic scale.
Therefore, the first number on the slide rule scale (also called the index) is 1 because the log of zero
is one.
Fig 1.04: An example of slide rule
The slide rule, also known colloquially in the United States as a slipstick, is a mechanical analog
computer. The slide rule is used primarily for multiplication and division, and also for functions such
as exponents, roots, logarithms and trigonometry, but typically not for addition or subtraction.
Though similar in name and appearance to a standard ruler, the slide rule is not meant to be used for
measuring length or drawing straight lines.
Slide rules exist in a diverse range of styles and generally appear in a linear or circular form with
a standardized set of markings (scales) essential to performing mathematical computations. Slide
rules manufactured for specialized fields such as aviation or finance typically feature additional scales
that aid in calculations common to those fields.
At its simplest, each number to be multiplied is represented by a length on a sliding ruler. As the
rulers each have a logarithmic scale, it is possible to align them to read the sum of the logarithms, and
hence calculate the product, of the two numbers.
The Reverend William Oughtred and others developed the slide rule in the 17th century based on
the emerging work on logarithms by John Napier. Before the advent of the electronic calculator, it
was the most commonly used calculation tool in science and engineering. The use of slide rules
continued to grow through the 1950s and 1960s even as computers were being gradually introduced;
but around 1974 the handheld electronic scientific calculator made them largely obsolete and most
suppliers left the business.
1.4.4 Pascal’s adding & subtracting machines

Consequently, the possibility of mechanising arithmetic was first demonstrated in public in 1642,
when Blaise Pascal (1623‑1662), the great French mathematician and philosopher, then only nineteen
years old and totally unaware of the achievements of his predecessor Schickard, constructed his
celebrated "Pascaline". He was spurred to invent it by the interminable calculations which he made
for the accounts of his father (whom Richelieu had appointed Intendant of Rouen), which he carried
out by means of an abacus with counters.
The principal characteristic of Pascal's machine was its facility for automatic carrying. This was
achieved by the use of a series of toothed wheels, each numbered from 0 to 9, linked (by weighted
ratchets) in such a way that when one wheel completed a revolution the next wheel advanced by one
step. The prototype had five wheels, and so could handle five‑digit numbers; later versions had six or
eight wheels.
[Numbers to be added were entered by turning setting‑wheels on the front of the machine, which
were linked by a series of crown gears to the wheels which displayed the results. Addition was done
by first turning the setting‑wheels by hand according to the digits of one number, and then turning
them according to the digits of the other. Transl.]
Essentially, this was an adding machine which could not run in reverse, so that direct subtraction
was impossible. Nevertheless, it was possible to perform subtraction by the process of adding the
decimal complement of the number to be subtracted.
The calculator had metal wheel dials that were turned to the appropriate numbers using a stylus;
the answers appeared in boxes in the top of the calculator. Blaise’s calculated was a polished brass
box, about 350mm by 125 mm by 75mm. It was compact enough to carry. On the top was a row of
eight movable dials, with numerals from 0 to 9, which is use to add a column of up to eight figures.
The right-hand dial represented deniers, the next dial represented sous, and the remainder were
for livres, of modern francs. The machines could be used equally well for pence, shilling, and pounds.

The machine could add, subtract, multiply, and divide. Multipl
Multiplication
ication and division were
somewhat difficult to do, by performing multiplication and division by repeated addition and
subtraction. In fact the machine could really only add, because subtractions were performed using
complementary techniques, in which the number to be subtracted is first converted into its
complement, which is then added to the first number. These two operations were made possible if one
considered multiplication as a form of addition and division a form of subtraction. For example, to
multiply
iply 1234 by 567 one would register 1234 seven times beginning with the dial on the right. The
next dial would be used to register 1234 six times. Finally, the next dial would register 1234 five
times. Pull the handle and the answer would appear. Interesti
Interestingly
ngly enough, modern computers employ
similar complement techniques.
There were problems faced by Pascal in the design of the calculator which were due to the design
of the French currency at that time. There were 20 sols in a livre and 12 deniers in a sol. The system
remained in France until 1799 but in Britain a system with similar multiples lasted until 1971. Pascal
had to solve much harder technical problems to work with this division of the livre into 240 than he
would have had if the division had been 100.
Pascal attempted to put the machine into production for his own profit. This was not a successful
venture, but it did result in a large number of units surviving to the present day. They are all slightly
different in that they have different numbers of
of digits in the accumulator or have slight differences in
the internal mechanisms. None of the surviving models functions very well, and it is doubtful if they
functioned perfectly even in Pascal’s day. The mechanism, although ingenious, is rather delicate and
prone to giving erroneous results when not treated with the utmost care. Some of them will, for
example, generate extra carries in certain digits of the accumulator when they are bumped or knocked
even slightly.
Fig 1.05
1.05: Pascal’s adding and subtraction machine
1.4.5 Leibniz’s multiplication and division machines

In 1673 German mathematician and philosopher Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz made a drawing of
his calculating machine mechanism. Using a stepped drum, the Leibniz Stepped Reckoner,
Reckoner

mechanized multiplication as well as addition by performing repetitive additions. The stepped-drum
gear, or Leibniz wheel, was the only workable solution to certain calculating machine problems until
about 1875. The technology remained in use through the early 1970s in the Curta hand-held
calculator.
Leibniz first published a brief illustrated description of his machine in "Brevis descriptio
machinae arithmeticae, cum figura. . . ," Miscellanea Berolensia ad incrementum scientiarum (1710)
317-19, figure 73. The lower portion of the frontispiece of the journal volume also shows a tiny
model of Leibniz's calculator. Because Leibniz had only a wooden model and two working metal
examples of the machine made, one of which was lost, his invention of the stepped reckoner was
primarily known through the 1710 paper and other publications. Nevertheless, the machine became
well-enough known to have great influence.
Leibniz conceived the idea of a calculating machine in the early 1670s with the aim of improving
upon Blaise Pascal's calculator, the Pascaline. He concentrated on expanding Pascal's mechanism so it
could multiply and divide. The first recorded indirect reference is in a letter from the French
mathematician Pierre de Carcavi (Carcavy) dated June 20, 1671 in which Pascal's machine is referred
to as "la machine du temps passé." Leibniz demonstrated a wooden model of his calculator at the
Royal Society of London on February 1, 1673, though the machine could not yet perform
multiplication and division automatically. In a letter of March 26, 1673 to Johann Friedrich, where he
mentioned the presentation in London, Leibniz described the purpose of the "arithmetic machine" as
making calculations "leicht, geschwind, gewiß" [sic], i.e. easy, fast, and reliable. Leibniz also added
that theoretically the numbers calculated might be as large as desired, if the size of the machine was
adjusted; quote: "eine zahl von einer ganzen Reihe Ziphern, sie sey so lang sie wolle (nach proportion
der größe der Maschine)" ("a number consisting of a series of figures, as long as it may be in
proportion to the size of the machine").
Fig 1.06: Stepped Reckoner (Wikipedia)
The step reckoner (or stepped reckoner) was a digital mechanical calculator invented by the
German mathematician Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz around 1672 and completed in 1694. The name
comes from the translation of the German term for its operating mechanism, Staffelwalze, meaning
'stepped drum'. It was the first calculator that could perform all four arithmetic operations.
Its intricate precision gearwork, however, was somewhat beyond the fabrication technology of

the time; mechanical problems, in addition to a design flaw in the carry mechanism, prevented the
machines from working reliably.
Two prototypes were built; today only one survives in the National Library of Lower Saxony
(Niedersächsische Landesbibliothek) in Hanover, Germany. Several later replicas are on display, such
as the one at the Deutsches Museum, Munich. Despite the mechanical flaws of the stepped reckoner,
it suggested possibilities to future calculator builders. The operating mechanism, invented by Leibniz,
called the stepped cylinder or Leibniz wheel, was used in many calculating machines for 200 years,
and into the 1970s with the Curta hand calculator.
1.4.6 Babbage’s analytical engine

The Analytical Engine was a proposed mechanical general-purpose computer designed by
English mathematician and computer pioneer Charles Babbage. It was first described in 1837 as the
successor to Babbage's difference engine, a design for a mechanical computer. The Analytical Engine
incorporated an arithmetic logic unit, control flow in the form of conditional branching and loops, and
integrated memory, making it the first design for a general-purpose computer that could be described
in modern terms as Turing-complete. In other words, the logical structure of the Analytical Engine
was essentially the same as that which has dominated computer design in the electronic era.
Babbage was never able to complete construction of any of his machines due to conflicts with his
chief engineer and inadequate funding. It was not until the 1940s that the first general-purpose
computers were actually built, more than a century after Babbage had proposed the pioneering
Analytical Engine in 1837.
Fig 1.06: Trial model of a part of the Analytical Engine, built by Babbage, as displayed at the
Science Museum (London)

The Analytical Engine was to be a general-purpose, fully program-controlled, automatic
mechanical digital computer. It would be able to perform any calculation set before it. There is no
evidence that anyone before Babbage had ever conceived of such a device, let alone attempted to
build one. The machine was designed to consist of four components: the mill, the store, the reader,
and the printer. These components are the essential components of every computer today. The mill
was the calculating unit, analogous to the central processing unit (CPU) in a modern computer; the
store was where data were held prior to processing, exactly analogous to memory and storage in
today’s computers; and the reader and printer were the input and output devices.
As with the Difference Engine, the project was far more complex than anything theretofore built.
The store was to be large enough to hold 1,000 50-digit numbers; this was larger than the storage
capacity of any computer built before 1960. The machine was to be steam-driven and run by one
attendant. The printing capability was also ambitious, as it had been for the Difference Engine:
Babbage wanted to automate the process as much as possible, right up to producing printed tables of
numbers.
The reader was another new feature of the Analytical Engine. Data (numbers) were to be entered
on punched cards, using the card-reading technology of the Jacquard loom. Instructions were also to
be entered on cards, another idea taken directly from Joseph-Marie Jacquard. The use of instruction
cards would make it a programmable device and far more flexible than any machine then in
existence. Another element of programmability was to be its ability to execute instructions in other
than sequential order. It was to have a kind of decision-making ability in its conditional control
transfer, also known as conditional branching, whereby it would be able to jump to a different
instruction depending on the value of some data. This extremely powerful feature was missing in
many of the early computers of the 20th century.
By most definitions, the Analytical Engine was a real computer as understood today—or would
have been, had Babbage not run into implementation problems again. Actually building his ambitious
design was judged infeasible given the current technology, and Babbage’s failure to generate the
promised mathematical tables with his Difference Engine had dampened enthusiasm for further
government funding. Indeed, it was apparent to the British government that Babbage was more
interested in innovation than in constructing tables.
All the same, Babbage’s Analytical Engine was something new under the sun. Its most
revolutionary feature was the ability to change its operation by changing the instructions on punched
cards. Until this breakthrough, all the mechanical aids to calculation were merely calculators or, like
the Difference Engine, glorified calculators. The Analytical Engine, although not actually completed,
was the first machine that deserved to be called a computer.
1.4.7 Mechanical calculator

In 1775 Earl Stanhope, in England, made two machines. Some say he copied Pascal, but he
didn't. His are very different. One of them, if it had worked accurately, would have been the prototype
of that class of machine known as the Odhner type. Odhner lived in Russia. Some say he was a Pole,
but I believe he was a Scandinavian. He made a successful machine about 1876. There is a great
family of machines made in Europe at present, known as the Odhner type ; probably twenty factories
making such machines. The Brunsviga is one of them. Odhner manufactures them himself in Russia,
but he is not so successful commercially as are the French and German manufacturers of that type of
machine.

But a hundred years earlier—1775—Lord Stanhope had in his machine the heart of the Odhner
machine. Each kind of machine—I do not care whether it be an automobile or a calculating
machine—has some fundamental feature, some heart, some key to it, which represents the invention,
which once thought of and produced successfully, the rest is easy. That feature of the Odhner
machine is found in the machine of Earl Stanhope for the first time. But it is not accurate and never
was. It is very fragile. They wouldn't let me operate it in the museum where it is preserved in London,
but I examined it very closely. No doubt it could be operated if handled very delicately and would get
results.
Fig 1.07: Charles Stanhope (Source: Wikipedia)
Another machine made by Earl Stanhope about the year 1777, contained the heart of what is
known as the Thomas type of machine. That machine contained a series of toothed wheels, having
wide faces bearing ten very long teeth ; the first one, reaching clear across the face, representing 9,
the next tooth being one-ninth shorter, the next one-eighth shorter, and so on. If you want to add 9,
you shove the toothed wheel along so that nine teeth will engage; if 8, you shove it along so that eight
will engage. That is in the second Stanhope machine, and it is the general principle of the Thomas
machine. In the Odhner type they get the variable number of engaging teeth by having a wheel with
movable teeth in it so they can slide in and out. As they turn a lever more or fewer teeth slide out.
1.5 ELECTRICAL CALCULATOR

Electronic calculating for the office had to wait on the miniaturisation of valves and the
development of solid state transistors. ANITA: First desktop all electronic calculator.

The first step was seen in 1961 with the arrival of ANITA (A New Inspiration To
Arithmetic/Accounting). This was the world’s first all-electronic desktop calculator and it was
developed in Britain by Control Systems Ltd., marketed under its Bell Punch and Sumlock brands.
ANITA used the same push button key layout as the company’s mechanical comptometers, but
these were the only moving parts. All the rest was done electronically, using a mix of vacuum and
cold cathode ‘Dekatron’ counting tubes.
The illuminated 12-place display was provided by ‘Nixie’ glow discharge tubes. From 1962, two
models were marketed; ANITA Mk. 7 for continental Europe and the Mk. 8 for Britain and the rest of
the world, with the latter soon becoming the only model.
Fig 1.08 ANITA Mark VIII (Source: Wikipedia)
Nevertheless, as the only electronic desktop calculator available, tens of thousands of ANITAs
were sold worldwide up to 1964, when three new transistorised competitors appeared; the American
Friden 130 series, the Italian IME 84, and the Sharp Compet CS10A from Japan.
1.5.1 Modern Electronic Calculator

An electronic calculator is a small, portable electronic device used to perform calculations,
ranging from basic arithmetic to complex mathematics.
The first solid state electronic calculator was created in the 1960s, building on the extensive
history of tools such as the abacus (developed around 2000 BC), and the mechanical calculator
(developed in the 17th century AD). It was developed in parallel with the analog computers of the
day.
The pocket sized devices became available in the 1970s, especially after the first microprocessor,
the Intel 4004, developed by Intel for the Japanese calculator company Busicom. They later became
used commonly within the petroleum industry (oil and gas).
Modern electronic calculators vary: from cheap, give-away, credit-card-sized models to sturdy
desktop models with built-in printers. They became popular in the mid-1970s (as integrated circuits
made their size and cost small). By the end of that decade, calculator prices had reduced to a point
where a basic calculator was affordable to most and they became common in schools.
Fig 1.09: An electronic pocket calculator with a liquid-crystal display (LCD) seven-segment
display, that can perform arithmetic operations.

Computer operating systems as far back as early Unix have included interactive calculator
programs such as dc and hoc, and calculator functions are included in almost all personal digital
assistant (PDA) type devices (save a few dedicated address book and dictionary devices).
In addition to general purpose calculators, there are those designed for specific markets. For
example, there are scientific calculators which include trigonometric and statistical calculations.
Some calculators even have the ability to do computer algebra. Graphing calculators can be used to
graph functions defined on the real line, or higher-dimensional Euclidean space. As of 2016, basic
calculators cost little, but the scientific and graphing models tend to cost more.
In 1986, calculators still represented an estimated 41% of the world's general-purpose hardware
capacity to compute information. By 2007, this diminished to less than 0.05%.
Internal Working
In general, a basic electronic calculator consists of the following components:
• Power source (mains electricity, battery and/or solar cell)

• Keypad (input device) – consists of keys used to input numbers and function commands
(addition, multiplication, square-root, etc.)
• Display panel (output device) – displays input numbers, commands and results. Liquid-
crystal displays (LCDs), vacuum fluorescent displays (VFDs), and light-emitting diode
(LED) displays use seven segments to represent each digit in a basic calculator. Advanced
calculators may use dot matrix displays.
• A printing calculator, in addition to a display panel, has a printing unit that prints results
in ink onto a roll of paper, using a printing mechanism.
• Processor chip (microprocessor or central processing unit).
Example
A basic explanation as to how calculations are performed in a simple 4-function calculator:
To perform the calculation 25 + 9, one presses keys in the following sequence on most
calculators: 2 5 + 9 =.
• When 2 5 is entered, it is picked up by the scanning unit; the number 25 is encoded and
sent to the X register;
• Next, when the + key is pressed, the "addition" instruction is also encoded and sent to
the flag or status register;
• The second number 9 is encoded and sent to the X register. This "pushes" (shifts) the
first number out into the Y register;
• When the = key is pressed, a "message" (signal) from the flag or status register tells the
permanent or non-volatile memory that the operation to be done is "addition";
• The numbers in the X and Y registers are then loaded into the ALU and the calculation
is carried out following instructions from the permanent or non-volatile memory;
• The answer, 34 is sent (shifted) back to the X register. From there, it is converted by the
binary decoder unit into a decimal number (usually binary-coded decimal), and then shown
on the display panel.

Other functions are usually performed using repeated additions or subtractions.
CHECK YOUR PROGRESS

Describe an abacus.
What are the types of computing machines
Elaborate on Napier’s bones.
How was Napier’s bones used for calculations.
What is a slide rule? How is it used?
Describe Pascal’s adding and subtracting machines.
Elaborate on the importance or Leibnitz Multiplication and Division Machines.
Discuss the importance of Babbage’s Analytical Engine.
Describe the contribution of Earl Charles Stanhope in the field of computing machines.
Explain the importance of ANITA in the history of computing.
Describe the internal working of an electronic calculator.
1.6 COMPUTER GENERATIONS

The history of computer development is often in reference to the different generations of
computing devices. Each of the five generations of computers is characterized by a major
technological development that fundamentally changed the way computers operate. Most major
developments resulted in increasingly smaller, cheaper and more powerful and efficient computing
devices.
1.6.1 First generation computers (1939-1954): Vacuum Tube

The first electronic computer, the ABC (Atanasoff Berry Computer) was designed in 1937 to
solve only systems of linear equation.
The ENIAC (electronic numerical integrator and computer) was built in 1945 for calculations
and because people demanded for the solution to war. It was the world’s first general-purpose
electronic digital computer. It used thousands of vacuum tubes, which took up a lot of space and since
the tubes failed frequently it was never useful. Engineers solved this problem by suggesting never
turning it off = lots of power.

UNIVAC (Universal Automatic Computer) was advancement of the ENIAC. It was the first
commercial computer in 1951. This computer weighed 29,000 pounds and used 5200 vacuum tubes,
you could imagine how much room and how big this computer is. The UNIVAC went through many
redesigns, which enhanced the memory, speed, and multiprocessor increased, and decreasing the
weight and space.
Fig 1.10: Control panel of UNIVAC 1213 (Source: Wikipedia)
The Computer in the first generation was based upon the creation of the vacuum tube and
magnetic drums for memory. It gave off a lot of heat and even with a gigantic air conditioner it would
overheat. Also think of the amount of space it took up.The Vacuum tube amplifies weak signals
making it stronger and can start/stop the flow of electricity. The vacuum tube was what drove the
expansion and commercialization of radio broadcasting, television, analog and digital computers etc.
Uses machine language the lowest level programming language
1.6.2 Second generation computers (1954-1959): Transistors:

In this generation, transistors were used that were cheaper, consumed less power, more compact
in size, more reliable and faster than the first generation machines made of vacuum tubes. In this
generation, magnetic cores were used as the primary memory and magnetic tape and magnetic disks
as secondary storage devices.

In this generation, assembly language and high-level programming languages like FORTRAN,
COBOL were used. The computers used batch processing and multiprogramming operating system.
Fig 1.11: Harwell CADET Computer, the first fully transistorised computer (Wikipedia)
The main features of second generation are :
●Reliable in comparison to first generation computers
●Smaller size as compared to first generation computers
●Generated less heat as compared to first generation computers
●Consumed less electricity as compared to first generation computers
●Faster than first generation computers
●Still very costly
●AC required
●Supported machine and assembly languages
1.6.3 Third generation computers (1959-1971): IC

The computers of third generation used Integrated Circuits (ICs) in place of transistors. A single
IC has many transistors, resistors, and capacitors along with the associated circuitry.
The IC was invented by Jack Kilby. This development made computers smaller in size, reliable,
and efficient. In this generation remote processing, time-sharing, multiprogramming operating system
were used. High-level languages (FORTRAN-II TO IV, COBOL, PASCAL PL/1, BASIC, ALGOL-
68 etc.) were used during this generation.
Fig 1.12: Intel 8742 eight-bit microcontroller IC (Wikipedia)
The main features of third generation are −
●More reliable in comparison to previous two generations
●Smaller size
●Generated less heat
●Faster
●Lesser maintenance
●Costly
●AC required

●Consumed lesser electricity
●Supported high-level language
1.6.4 Fourth generation (1939-1954): Microprocessors

The period of fourth generation was from 1971-1980. Computers of fourth generation used Very
Large Scale Integrated (VLSI) circuits. VLSI circuits having about 5000 transistors and other circuit
elements with their associated circuits on a single chip made it possible to have microcomputers of
fourth generation.
Fourth generation computers became more powerful, compact, reliable, and affordable. As a
result, it gave rise to Personal Computer (PC) revolution. In this generation, time sharing, real time
networks, distributed operating system were used. All the high-level languages like C, C++, DBASE
etc., were used in this generation.
The main features of fourth generation are −
●VLSI technology used
●Very cheap
●Portable and reliable
●Use of PCs
●Very small size
●Pipeline processing
●No AC required
●Concept of internet was introduced
●Great developments in the fields of networks
●Computers became easily available
1.6.5 Fifth generation computers (1991 & beyond)

The period of fifth generation is 1980-till date. In the fifth generation, VLSI technology became
ULSI (Ultra Large Scale Integration) technology, resulting in the production of microprocessor chips
having ten million electronic components.
This generation is based on parallel processing hardware and AI (Artificial Intelligence) software.
AI is an emerging branch in computer science, which interprets the means and method of making
computers think like human beings. All the high-level languages like C and C++, Java, .Net etc., are
used in this generation.

AI includes :
●Robotics
●Neural Networks
●Game Playing
●Development of expert systems to make decisions in real-life situations
●Natural language understanding and generation
Fig 1.13: ‘Kismet’, a robot with rudimentary social skills (Wikipedia)
The main features of fifth generation are −
●ULSI technology
●Development of true artificial intelligence
●Development of Natural language processing

●Advancement in Parallel Processing
●Advancement in Superconductor technology
●More user-friendly interfaces with multimedia features
●Availability of very powerful and compact computers at cheaper rates
CHECK YOUR PROGRESS

Describe the five generations of the Computers, with technological chatercteristics for each of
them.
What is the importance of UNIVAC?
Why is the contribution of Harwell CADET Computer significant?
What are the main features of third generation computers?
Elaborate on the technological features of fourth generation computers.
What is the significance of Artificial Intelligence?
1.7 TYPES OF COMPUTERS

Computers can be generally classified by size and power as follows, though there is considerable
overlap:
●Mainframe: A powerful multi-user computer capable of supporting many hundreds or thousands

of users simultaneously.
●Supercomputer: An extremely fast computer that can perform hundreds of millions of

instructions per second
●Personal computer: A small, single-user computer based on a microprocessor.
●Workstation: A powerful, single-user computer. A workstation is like a personal computer, but

it has a more powerful microprocessor and, in general, a higher-quality monitor.
●Minicomputer: A multi-user computer capable of supporting up to hundreds of users

simultaneously.

1.8 WORKSTATIONS
A workstation is a special computer designed for technical or scientific applications. Intended
primarily to be used by one person at a time, they are commonly connected to a local area network
and run multi-user operating systems. The term workstation has also been used loosely to refer to
everything from a mainframe computer terminal to a PC connected to a network, but the most
common form refers to the group of hardware offered by several current and defunct companies such
as Sun Microsystems, Silicon Graphics, Apollo Computer, DEC, HP, NeXT and IBM which opened
the door for the 3D graphics animation revolution of the late 1990s.
Workstations offered higher performance than mainstream personal computers, especially with
respect to CPU and graphics, memory capacity, and multitasking capability. Workstations were
optimized for the visualization and manipulation of different types of complex data such as 3D
mechanical design, engineering simulation (e.g., computational fluid dynamics), animation and
rendering of images, and mathematical plots. Typically, the form factor is that of a desktop computer,
consist of a high resolution display, a keyboard and a mouse at a minimum, but also offer multiple
displays, graphics tablets, 3D mice (devices for manipulating 3D objects and navigating scenes), etc.
Workstations were the first segment of the computer market to present advanced accessories and
collaboration tools.
Fig 1.14: Dell Precision T3500 workstation with Intel Xeon processors (Wikipedia)
The increasing capabilities of mainstream PCs in the late 1990s have blurred the lines somewhat
with technical/scientific workstations. The workstation market previously employed proprietary
hardware which made them distinct from PCs; for instance IBM used RISC-based CPUs for its
workstations and Intel x86 CPUs for its business/consumer PCs during the 1990s and 2000s.
However, by the early 2000s this difference disappeared, as workstations now use highly
commoditized hardware dominated by large PC vendors, such as Dell, Hewlett-Packard (later HP
Inc.) and Fujitsu, selling Microsoft Windows or Linux systems running on x86-64 architecture such
as Intel Xeon or AMD Opteron CPUs.
1.9 MAINFRAME
These computers are capable of handling and processing very large amounts of data quickly.
Mainframe computers are used in large institutions such as government, banks and large corporations.
They are measured in MIPS (million instructions per second) and respond to up to 100s of millions of
users at a time.
Mainframe computers (colloquially referred to as "big iron") are computers used primarily by
large organizations for critical applications, bulk data processing, such as census, industry and
consumer statistics, enterprise resource planning, and transaction processing.
The term originally referred to the large cabinets called "main frames" that housed the central
processing unit and main memory of early computers. Later, the term was used to distinguish high-
end commercial machines from less powerful units. Most large-scale computer system architectures
were established in the 1960s, but continue to evolve.
Modern mainframe design is generally less defined by single-task computational speed (typically
defined as MIPS rate or FLOPS in the case of floating point calculations), and more by:
• Redundant internal engineering resulting in high reliability and security

• Extensive input-output facilities with the ability to offload to separate engines
• Strict backward compatibility with older software
• High hardware and computational utilization rates through virtualization to support
massive throughput.
Their high stability and reliability enable these machines to run uninterrupted for decades.
Software upgrades usually require setting up the operating system or portions thereof, and are
non-disruptive only when using virtualizing facilities such as IBM's z/OS and Parallel Sysplex, or
Unisys's XPCL, which support workload sharing so that one system can take over another's
application while it is being refreshed. Mainframes are defined by high availability, one of the main
reasons for their longevity, since they are typically used in applications where downtime would be
costly or catastrophic. The term reliability, availability and serviceability (RAS) is a defining
characteristic of mainframe computers. Proper planning and implementation is required to exploit
these features, and if improperly implemented, may serve to inhibit the benefits provided. In addition,
mainframes are more secure than other computer types: the NIST vulnerabilities database, US-CERT,
rates traditional mainframes such as IBM zSeries, Unisys Dorado and Unisys Libra as among the
most secure with vulnerabilities in the low single digits as compared with thousands for Windows,
Unix, and Linux.
In the late 1950s, most mainframes had no explicitly interactive interface, but only accepted sets
of punched cards, paper tape, or magnetic tape to transfer data and programs. They operated in batch
mode to support back office functions such as payroll and customer billing, much of which was based
on repeated tape-based sorting and merging operations followed by a print run to preprinted

continuous stationery. In cases where interactive terminals were supported, these were used almost
exclusively for applications (e.g. airline booking) rather than program development. Typewriter and
Teletype devices were also common control consoles for system operators through the 1970s,
although ultimately supplanted by keyboard/display devices.
By the early 1970s, many mainframes acquired interactive user interfaces[NB 1] and operated as
timesharing computers, supporting hundreds of users simultaneously along with batch processing.
Users gained access through specialized terminals or, later, from personal computers equipped with
terminal emulation software. By the 1980s, many mainframes supported graphical terminals, and
terminal emulation, but not graphical user interfaces. This format of end-user computing reached
mainstream obsolescence in the 1990s due to the advent of personal computers provided with GUIs.
After 2000, most modern mainframes have partially or entirely phased out classic "green screen"
terminal access for end-users in favour of Web-style user interfaces.
The infrastructure requirements were drastically reduced during the mid-1990s, when CMOS
mainframe designs replaced the older bipolar technology. IBM claimed that its newer mainframes
could reduce data center energy costs for power and cooling, and that they could reduce physical
space requirements compared to server farms.
Fig 1.15: Inside an IBM System z9 mainframe

1.9.1 Differences between Mainframe and supercomputers
A supercomputer is a computer that is at the frontline of current processing capacity, particularly
speed of calculation. Supercomputers are used for scientific and engineering problems (high-
performance computing) which are data crunching and number crunching, while mainframes are used
for transaction processing. The differences are as follows:
• Mainframes are built to be reliable for transaction processing (measured by TPC-metrics;

not used or very helpful for most supercomputing applications) as it is commonly understood
in the business world: a commercial exchange of goods, services, or money. A typical
transaction, as defined by the Transaction Processing Performance Council, would include
the updating to a database system for such things as inventory control (goods), airline
reservations (services), or banking (money). A transaction could refer to a set of operations
including disk read/writes, operating system calls, or some form of data transfer from one
subsystem to another. This operation doesn't count toward the processing power of a
computer. Transaction processing is not exclusive to mainframes but also used in the
performance of microprocessor-based servers and online networks.
• Supercomputers are measured in floating point operations per second (FLOPS) or in
traversed edges per second or TEPS; metrics that are not very meaningful for mainframe
applications; while mainframes are sometimes approximately measured in millions of
instructions per second (MIPS), (a metric not used on supercomputers; as not very helpful, it's
arguably neither for mainframes to measure real performance of the transaction processing
goal, but such or similar sub-component of it, may be used for billing purposes). Examples of
integer operations (the instructions counted by MIPS) include adding numbers together,
checking values or moving data around in memory (while moving information to and from
storage, so-called I/O is most helpful for mainframes; and within memory, only helping
indirectly). Floating point operations are mostly addition, subtraction, and multiplication (of
binary floating point in supercomputers; measured by FLOPS) with enough digits of
precision to model continuous phenomena such as weather prediction and nuclear simulations
(only recently standardized decimal floating point, not used in supercomputers, are
appropriate for monetary values such as those useful for mainframe applications). In terms of
computational ability, supercomputers are more powerful.
In 2007, an amalgamation of the different technologies and architectures for supercomputers and
mainframes has led to the so-called gameframe.
1.9.2 Characteristics of Mainframe

Modern mainframes can run multiple different instances of operating systems at the same time.
This technique of virtual machines allows applications to run as if they were on physically distinct
computers. In this role, a single mainframe can replace higher-functioning hardware services
available to conventional servers. While mainframes pioneered this capability, virtualization is now
available on most families of computer systems, though not always to the same degree or level of
sophistication.
Mainframes can add or hot swap system capacity without disrupting system function, with
specificity and granularity to a level of sophistication not usually available with most server solutions.
Modern mainframes, notably the IBM zSeries, System z9 and System z10 servers, offer two levels of

virtualization: logical partitions (LPARs, via the PR/SM facility) and virtual machines (via the z/VM
operating system). Many mainframe customers run two machines: one in their primary data center,
and one in their backup data center—fully active, partially active, or on standby—in case there is a
catastrophe affecting the first building. Test, development, training, and production workload for
applications and databases can run on a single machine, except for extremely large demands where
the capacity of one machine might be limiting. Such a two-mainframe installation can support
continuous business service, avoiding both planned and unplanned outages. In practice many
customers use multiple mainframes linked either by Parallel Sysplex and shared DASD (in IBM's
case), or with shared, geographically dispersed storage provided by EMC or Hitachi.
Mainframes are designed to handle very high volume input and output (I/O) and emphasize
throughput computing. Since the late-1950s,[NB 2] mainframe designs have included subsidiary
hardware[NB 3] (called channels or peripheral processors) which manage the I/O devices, leaving the
CPU free to deal only with high-speed memory. It is common in mainframe shops to deal with
massive databases and files. Gigabyte to terabyte-size record files are not unusual. Compared to a
typical PC, mainframes commonly have hundreds to thousands of times as much data storage online,
and can access it reasonably quickly. Other server families also offload I/O processing and emphasize
throughput computing.
Mainframe return on investment (ROI), like any other computing platform, is dependent on its
ability to scale, support mixed workloads, reduce labor costs, deliver uninterrupted service for critical
business applications, and several other risk-adjusted cost factors.
Mainframes also have execution integrity characteristics for fault tolerant computing. For
example, z900, z990, System z9, and System z10 servers effectively execute result-oriented
instructions twice, compare results, arbitrate between any differences (through instruction retry and
failure isolation), then shift workloads "in flight" to functioning processors, including spares, without
any impact to operating systems, applications, or users. This hardware-level feature, also found in
HP's NonStop systems, is known as lock-stepping, because both processors take their "steps" (i.e.
instructions) together. Not all applications absolutely need the assured integrity that these systems
provide, but many do, such as financial transaction processing.
1.10 SUPERCOMPUTER
A supercomputer is a computer with a high level of computing performance compared to a
general-purpose computer. Performance of a supercomputer is measured in floating-point operations
per second (FLOPS) instead of million instructions per second (MIPS). As of 2015, there are
supercomputers which can perform up to quadrillions of FLOPS, measured in P(eta)FLOPS. The
majority of supercomputers today run Linux-based operating systems.
Supercomputers play an important role in the field of computational science, and are used for a
wide range of computationally intensive tasks in various fields, including quantum mechanics,
weather forecasting, climate research, oil and gas exploration, molecular modeling (computing the
structures and properties of chemical compounds, biological macromolecules, polymers, and
crystals), and physical simulations (such as simulations of the early moments of the universe, airplane
and spacecraft aerodynamics, the detonation of nuclear weapons, and nuclear fusion). Throughout
their history, they have been essential in the field of cryptanalysis.

Supercomputers were introduced in the 1960s, and for several decades the fastest were made by
Seymour Cray at Control Data Corporation (CDC), Cray Research and subsequent companies bearing
his name or monogram. The first such machines were highly tuned conventional designs that ran
faster than their more general-purpose contemporaries. Through the 1960s, they began to add
increasing amounts of parallelism with one to four processors being typical. From the 1970s, the
vector computing concept with specialized math units operating on large arrays of data came to
dominate. A notable example is the highly successful Cray-1 of 1976. Vector computers remained the
dominant design into the 1990s. From then until today, massively parallel supercomputers with tens
of thousands of off-the-shelf processors became the norm.
Fig 1.16: The IBM Blue Gene/P supercomputer "Intrepid" at Argonne National Laboratory runs
164,000 processor cores using normal data center air conditioning, grouped in 40 racks/cabinets
connected by a high-speed 3-D torus network. (Wikipedia)
The US has long been a leader in the supercomputer field, first through Cray's almost
uninterrupted dominance of the field, and later through a variety of technology companies. Japan
made major strides in the field in the 1980s and 90s, but since then China has become increasingly
important. As of June 2016, the fastest supercomputer on the TOP500 supercomputer list is the
Sunway TaihuLight, in China, with a LINPACK benchmark score of 93 PFLOPS, exceeding the
previous record holder, Tianhe-2, by around 59 PFLOPS. Sunway TaihuLight's emergence is also
notable for its use of indigenous chips, and is the first Chinese computer to enter the TOP500 list
without using hardware from the United States. As of June 2016, China, for the first time, had more
computers (167) on the TOP500 list than the United States (165). However, US built computers held
ten of the top 20 positions; in November 2016 the U.S. has five of the top 10 and China two, in fact
the top two.
A Supercomputer is focused on performing tasks involving intense numerical calculations such

as weather forecasting, fluid dynamics, nuclear simulations, theoretical astrophysics, and complex

scientific computations. A supercomputer is a computer that is at the front-line of current processing
capacity, particularly speed of calculation. The term supercomputer itself is rather fluid, and the speed
of today's supercomputers tends to become typical of tomorrow's ordinary computer. Supercomputer
processing speeds are measured in floating point operations per second, or FLOPS.
1.11 SERVERS
A server is a computer that serves up information to other computers on a network. Many
businesses have file servers employees can use to store and share files. A server can look like a
regular desktop computer, or it can be much larger.
Servers also play an important role in making the Internet work: They are where WebPages are
stored. When you use your browser to click a link, a web server delivers the page you requested.
In computing, a server is a computer program or a device that provides functionality for other
programs or devices, called "clients". This architecture is called the client–server model, and a single
overall computation is distributed across multiple processes or devices. Servers can provide various
functionalities, often called "services", such as sharing data or resources among multiple clients, or
performing computation for a client. A single server can serve multiple clients, and a single client can
use multiple servers. A client process may run on the same device or may connect over a network to a
server on a different device. Typical servers are database servers, file servers, mail servers, print
servers, web servers, game servers, and application servers.
Fig 1.17: Wikimedia Foundation Server (Wikipedia)
Client–server systems are today most frequently implemented by (and often identified with) the
request–response model: a client sends a request to the server, which performs some action and sends
a response back to the client, typically with a result or acknowledgement. Designating a computer as
"server-class hardware" implies that it is specialized for running servers on it. This often implies that
it is more powerful and reliable than standard personal computers, but alternatively, large computing
clusters may be composed of many relatively simple, replaceable server components.
The purpose of a server is to share data as well as to share resources and distribute work. A server
computer can serve its own computer programs as well; depending on the scenario, this could be part
of a quid pro quo transaction, or simply a technical possibility.
Hardware requirement
Fig 1.18: A rack-mountable server with the top cover removed to reveal internal components
(Wikipedia)
Hardware requirement for servers vary widely, depending on the server's purpose and its
software.
Since servers are usually accessed over a network, many run unattended without a computer
monitor or input device, audio hardware and USB interfaces. Many servers do not have a graphical
user interface (GUI). They are configured and managed remotely. Remote management can be
conducted via various methods including Microsoft Management Console (MMC), PowerShell, SSH
and browser-based out-of-band management systems such as Dell's iDRAC or HP's iLo.
CHECK YOUR PROGRESS

Describe the features of workstations.
Distinguish between mainframe and supercomputers.

What are the characteristics of a mainframe computer?
Elaborate on the concept of supercomputers.
Explain the importance of servers.
1.12 SUMMARY
Computer, one of the most powerful innovations in human history, is an electronic device that
executes the instructions in a program. A computer accepts data, processes data, produces output and
also stores results.
A computer responds to a specific set of instructions in a well-defined manner and it can execute
a prerecorded list of instructions (a program). Factors like speed, clock speed, reliability, accuracy,
storage, diligence, versatility, make a computer powerful and efficient. Power of remembering, no IQ,
and no feelings also reduce the probability of human errors.
Computers can be mainly classified according to the power and size of the computer.
Computers can be categorized into different generations—first, second, third and fourth
generation according to their development and modernization, since its advance and subsequent.
There are various types of computers, like the workstation, personal computer, minicomputer,
supercomputer and mainframes. There are also desktops, laptops, palmtops etc.

programs or devices, called "clients".
1.13 KEY TERMS

Abacus: A wooden rack which holds two horizontal wires with beads strung on them. Numbers
are represented using the respective position of beads on the rack.
Hand-held computers: A small computer, known as hand-held computer, litcrally fits in our hand.
Hand-held computers are extremely easy to carry.
Minicomputer: Minicomputer is midsize computer. The difference between large minicomputers

and small mainframes has blurred in the past decade.

Palmtop : A small computer that literally fits in your palm. In comparison to full size
computer,these type of computers are very limited. Palmtop computers are practical for certain
purpose such as calendars and phonebooks.
Slimline models: Desktop models designed to be very small are sometimes referred to as slimline
mosels.
Supercomputers: One of the fastest computers among the currently available computers is known
as Supercomputers.

programs or devices, called "clients".
1.14 END QUESTIONS

1. What is a computer?
2. What does a computer do?
3. What are various specific features which the computers enjoy over human beings?
4. What is meant by diligence in reference to the features of computers.
5. Explain how computers are versatile.
6. Describe an abacus.
7. What are the types of computing machines?
8. Elaborate on Napier’s bones.
9. How was Napier’s bones used for calculations?
10. What is a slide rule? How is it used?
11. Describe Pascal’s adding and subtracting machines.
12. Elaborate on the importance or Leibnitz Multiplication and Division Machines.
13. Discuss the importance of Babbage’s Analytical Engine.
14. Describe the contribution of Earl Charles Stanhope in the field of computing machines.
15. Explain the importance of ANITA in the history of computing.
16. Describe the internal working of an electronic calculator.
17. Describe the features of workstations.
18. Distinguish between mainframe and supercomputers.
19. What are the characteristics of a mainframe computer?
20. Elaborate on the concept of supercomputers.
21. Explain the importance of servers.
1.15 REFERENCES
Wikipedia entries on (Supercomputer, Mainframe, History of computing hardware, Harwell
CADET, Sumlock ANITA calculator, Server (computing), Charles Stanhope, 3rd Earl Stanhope)

http://www.ict.griffith.edu.au/~johnt/1004ICT/lectures/lecture04/Ifrah-pp121-133.html
http://uwf.edu/clemley/cgs1570w/notes/Concepts-1.htm

UNIT 2: COMPUTER ORGANIZATION
2.0 BEFORE WE BEGIN

In the previous Unit we studied the overview of computers. We are all aware of computers. We
use computers daily, even without our conscious efforts. The smart phone which you use is in fact a
computer. It runs a number of computer programs for you to help you read document, see pictures,
record audio, make movie clips and all that. The washing machines which you may be using employ
microprocessors to calculate the time for various operations.
In the last unit, we studied the journey of mankind to quest of computers. The prehistoric man
discovered laws of arithmetic which helped him in his survival. As the man progressed the number-
crunching kept on becoming more and more complicated. We required more skilled people or
techniques which would make number-crunching easier. In this process, devices like abacus, Napier’s
bones, Leibnitz machine, slide rule, analytical engine, analog computers and digital computers got
introduced. We saw the journey of digital computers in the five generations, from vacuum tubes to
Integrated Circuits, microprocessors and Artificial Intelligence. We also studied various types of
computers like servers, workstations, mainframe and supercomputers.
We will now take a closer look at the computer organisation. We will be studying the ‘hardware’
part in this unit. You may have heard the terms like ‘hardware’ and ‘software’. Hardware are tangible
aspects of computers. Here, ‘tangible’ means those things which you can sense through vision, touch,
smell, taste and sound. You can see and touch a keyboard, display, mouse, printouts, printers,
scanners, modems, pen drives, etc. Hence we say they are ‘hardware’, But you cannot actually feel
through your senses a program, algorithm or plan of action. You may take print out of a code or
program but that is just a representation of the program and not the program itself. A program,
operating system, algorithm, method is an abstract, intangible part hence we call them as software.
So let us begin our journey to this interesting field.
2.1 UNIT OBJECTIVES

• explain the basic organization of a computer system.

• describe the basic computer operations.
• elaborate the functioning of control unit, arithmetic logical unit central processing unit.
• Define computer memory.
• Differentiate between input devices and output devices.
• Differentiate between primary storage and secondary storage units.
• Discuss the various secondary storage devices.
2.2 BASIC COMPUTER OPERATIONS

Computer hardware is made up of the equipment used to make up computer unit. These parts
include your monitor, central processing unit (CPU), keyboard, mouse, printer, and modem.
The computer is an electronic machine that performs the following four general operations:
• Input
• Storage
• Processing
• Output.
Input
The input hardware allows you to enter data into the computer. The primary devices used are the
keyboard and mouse.
Keyboard - The keyboard looks like the typewriter. A numeric keypad is located to the right of
the keyboard. Numeric keys have the same placement as a 10-key calculator, which allow the
operator to enter data rapidly.
Mouse - The mouse is a device that allows you to control the movement of the insertion point on
the screen. The operator places the palm of the hand over the mouse and moves it across a mouse pad,
which provides traction for the rolling ball inside the device. Movement of the ball determines the
location of the I beam on the computer screen. When the operator clicks the mouse the I beam
becomes an insertion point which indicates the area you are working on the screen.
Processing
The central processing unit or (CPU) is the "brain" of your computer. It contains the electronic
circuits that cause the computer to follow instructions from ROM (read only memory) or from a
program in RAM (random access memory). By following these instructions information is processed.
The CPU contains three parts.
1. Arithmetic Logic Unit - ALU is where the "intelligence" of the computer is located. It can add
and compare numbers. To multiply 2 x 4 the computer would add 2 + 2 + 2 + 2. The ALU makes
decisions by determining if a number is greater, less, or equal to the other number. Processing is
completed in nanoseconds, which is a billionth of a second.
2. Memory - Two types of memory contained on a chip are RAM (Random Access Memory) or
ROM (Read Only Memory). ROM memory has been installed on your computer by the manufacturer
and can not be altered. ROM is the memory that determines all the basic functions of the operation of
your machine, such as startup, shutdown, and placing a character on the screen. RAM is temporary
memory, which displays the information you are working on. Today's applications require large
amounts of temporary memory, which may require you to upgrade and add more RAM memory.
3. Control Unit - This is the part of the unit, which directs information to the proper places in
your computer, such as calculation of information by the ALU unit or to store and print material.
Output

Output devices such as a monitor or printer make information you input available for you to view
or use.
A monitor's front is called a screen with a cathode ray tube (CRT) attached to the screen. Portable
computers use a (LCD) liquid crystal display. Today's super video graphics array (SVGA) monitors
display 256 sharp and clear colors.
Printers used with computers fall into two categories, impact or nonimpact. Impact printers, such
as dot matrix print by contact against a ribbon making imprint on paper.
Storage
Auxiliary storage devices, also called secondary storage devices, are used to store instructions
and data when they are not being used in memory. Two types of auxiliary storage more often used on
personal computers are floppy disks and hard disks. Also, CD-ROM drives are common.
A computer as displayed in diagram below carry out mainly five main operations or functions
irrespective of their size and make. These are
• It accepts data or instructions through way of input,

• It stores data,
• It can process data as needed by the user,
• It provides results in the form of output, and
• It manages all operations inside a computer.
Fig 2.01: Block diagram of a computer system
CHECK YOUR PROGRESS
What operations does a computer perform?

Explain input devices.
What are the parts of Central Processing Unit?
Explain output devices.
2.2.1. INPUT
Input is the process of entering programs and data in the computer system. You should be
familiar with that computer is an electronic machine such as any other machine that takes as inputs
raw data and carry on some processing providing out processed data. So, the input unit acquires data
from us to the computer in an organized way for processing.
Input device translates words, sounds images, and actions that people understand into symbols
that the system unit can process. Input devices include keyboards, Mouse, digital Camera and light
pen.
"An input device is a hardware device that is used to provide input (data / instructions) to a
computer so that it can be processed".
Besides the widely used input devices like keyboard & Mice there are other different input
devices that perform various input operations like a scanner scan images / documents. Webcams
capture videos & images.
Fig 2.02: Input devises
Keyboard - A keyboard is an essential input device that combines a typewriter keyboard with a
numeric keypad. The special purpose keys and the function keys are used to perform a special tasks
like pressing Control key (CTRL) key in combination with “P” prints a document, or pressing the
“F2” function key opens a window with help content about any issue or topic. Nowadays Multimedia
keyboards are common as they have task specific keys & buttons. For example, volume control ext.

Wireless keyboards are also popular these days, that can be connected to a tablet or a computer via
Bluetooth.
Mouse - The mouse is another essential input device that controls the pointer displayed on the
monitor. A mouse can have 2 or more buttons. Mostly the Right-Mouse Button and the Left-Mouse
button, and a wheel button for scrolling pages.
Mechanical Mouse - A mechanical mouse is considered as the traditional mouse and is now
replaced by optical mouse. A mechanical mouse has a ball on the bottom, which is attached to the
system unit through a cord. A mechanical mouse requires periodic cleaning.
Optical mouse - Optical Mouse is widely used these days. Like the mechanical mouse, it does
not have any moving parts. It emits & senses light to detect mouse movements. Optical mouse can be
used on any surface with great precision as compared to Mechanical mouse.
Wireless Mouse - A wireless mouse or cordless mouse uses infrared or radio wares to
communicate with the system units. A wireless mouse is battery powered and can be connected to a
laptop or tablet computer.
Joystick - A very popular input device that is used for computer games. Different buttons are
used for controlling the game. They can be used with gaming consoles like Xbox 360 or Playstation.
Touch Screen - A touch screen is a particular kind of monitor screen covered with a plastic
layer. Behind this layer are crisscrossed invisible beams of infrared light. This arrangement enables
someone to perform actions by touching the screen with a finger or stylus. With it growing popularity
touchscreens are used in smartphones, Automated Teller Machine (ATM) etc.
Optical Scanner - A scanner reads data or information from a source. This source can be a written
document, on an image. A scanner, also called optical scanner can copy or reproduce text as well as
images.
Bar Code Reader - You must be familiar with a Bar Code Reader from grocery stores &
shopping malls. A barcode reader is a photoelectric scanner that reads the bar codes of a product. The
bar code reader reads the barcode of a product and displays the information about the product, for
example the price of the product.
CHECK YOUR PROGRESS

Explain the process of input for a computer.
Explain various types of input devices.
2.2.2 PROCESSING
The duty of performing operations such as arithmetic and logical operations is known as
processing. The Central Processing Unit (CPU) gets data and instructions from the storage unit and
performs all types of calculations relies on the instructions provided and the type of data given. It is
after that delivered again to the storage unit.
2.2.3 CONTROL
The way how instructions are executed and the above operations are carried out. Controlling of
all operations such as input, processing and output are carried out through control unit. It is careful of
gradually processing of all operations in the computer
2.2.4 OUTPUT
Output is the process of generating results from the data for getting helpful information. Likewise
the output generated through the computer after processing must also be kept wherever inside the
computer before being provided to you in human readable form. Again the output is as well stored
inside the computer for additional processing.
Output Devices
Output devices displays the processed form of data to the end user.
Common Output devices include
• Monitor
• Printer
• Speaker
Monitor
Monitor is the most important output device of a computer system. The monitor is the display
screen of a computer. Cathode Rays Tube (CRT) and Liquid Crystal Display (LCD) are the two types
of Monitors.
The CRT monitor looks like a television. At one end of CRT Monitor there is a device that
produce electrons and bombard it towards the other end where the screen is located, resulting in the
screen glowing because of a substance on the screen. The CRT Monitors are expensive and occupies
more space as compared to LCD Monitors.
LCD stands for Liquid Crystal Display. It has the properties of both liquid and solid, that’s why it
has a sharp and better picture quality than CRT Monitors. LCD monitors are relatively expensive than
CRT monitors. Basically, the LCD monitors were designed for laptops. Nowadays they are getting
popular because of its slim size and flat screen.
Printers
A Printer takes print commands from a computer and print out text / images on a paper. Different
types of printers are available for various purposes. A printer for office use must be heavy duty and
fast while for photographs it must produce high quality prints. Dot-Matrix, Ink-Jet, Laser-Jet are the
different types of printers. Print quality of Laser-Jet printer is excellent as compared to Inkjet or other
types of printers, but they are relatively more expensive than the others. Most laser printers produce
black & white prints while some can produce color prints as well. The color laser printers are way too
expensive then black & white laser printers.

Speakers
Speaker is an important part of a computer system. Some systems have a built-in speaker, though
they are small in size. Speaker is an essential part of a computer because they can notify about
various system notifications through various sounds. Big speakers, woofers & subwoofers are used
for enhance sound quality or creating a mini home theater.
2.2.5 STORAGE
Storage is the process of saving data and instructions permanently. Data has to be delivered into
the system previous to the actual processing begins. It is since the processing speed of CPU (Central
Processing Unit) is very fast that the data has to be given to CPU with similar speed. So the data is
first stored in the storage unit for faster processing and access. This computer system’s primary
storage is intended to do the above functionality. It gives space for storing instructions and data.
CHECK YOUR PROGRESS

Explain the function of storage for a computer.
Explain various types of output devices.
2.3 FUNCTIONAL UNIT

The computer system is divided into the following three different units for its operation.
• Arithmetic Logical Unit

• Control Unit
• Central Processing Unit
In order to carry out the Operation discussed in the previous sections the computer allots the
operation between its different functional units.
2.3.1 Arithmetic and Logic Unit (ALU)

The arithmetic and logic unit (ALU) of a computer system is the place where the actual execution
of the instructions take place during the processing operations. All calculations are performed and all
comparisons (decisions) are made in the ALU. The data and instructions, stored in the primary
storage prior to processing are transferred as and when needed to the ALU where processing takes
place. No processing is done in the primary storage unit. Intermediate results generated in the ALU
are temporarily transferred back to the primary storage until needed at a later time. Data may thus
move from primary storage to ALU and back again as storage many times before the processing is
over. After the completion of processing, the final results which are stored in the storage unit are
released to an output device.
The arithmetic and logic unit (ALU) is the part where actual computations take place. It consists
of circuits that perform arithmetic operations (e.g. addition, subtraction, multiplication, division over
data received from memory and capable to compare numbers (less than, equal to, or greater than).

While performing these operations the ALU takes data from the temporary storage are inside the
CPU named registers. Registers are a group of cells used for memory addressing, data manipulation
and processing. Some of the registers are general purpose and some are reserved for certain functions.
It is a high-speed memory which holds only data from immediate processing and results of this
processing. If these results are not needed for the next instruction, they are sent back to the main
memory and registers are occupied by the new data used in the next instruction.
All activities in the computer system are composed of thousands of individual steps. These steps
should follow in some order in fixed intervals of time. These intervals are generated by the Clock
Unit. Every operation within the CPU takes place at the clock pulse. No operation, regardless of how
simple, can be performed in less time than transpires between ticks of this clock. But some operations
required more than one clock pulse. The faster the clock runs, the faster the computer performs. The
clock rate is measured in megahertz (Mhz) or Gigahertz (Ghz). Larger systems are even faster. In
older systems the clock unit is external to the microprocessor and resides on a separate chip. In most
modern microprocessors the clock is usually incorporated within the CPU.
2.3.2 Control Unit

How the input device knows that it is time for it to feed data into the storage unit? How does the
ALU know what should be done with the data once it is received? And how is it that only the final
results are sent to the output devices and not the intermediate results? All this is possible because of
the control unit of the computer system. By selecting, interpreting, and seeing to the execution of the
program instructions, the control unit is able to maintain order and directs the operation of the entire
system. Although, it does not perform any actual processing on the data, the control unit acts as a
central nervous system for the other components of the computer. It manages and coordinates the
entire computer system. It obtains instructions from the program stored in main memory, interprets
the instructions, and issues signals that cause other units of the system to execute them.
The control unit directs and controls the activities of the internal and external devices. It
interprets the instructions fetched into the computer, determines what data, if any, are needed, where
it is stored, where to store the results of the operation, and sends the control signals to the devices
involved in the execution of the instructions.
2.3.3 Central Processing Unit (CPU)

The main unit inside the computer is the CPU. This unit is responsible for all events inside the
computer. It controls all internal and external devices, performs"Arithmetic and Logical operations".
The operations a Microprocessor performs are called "instruction set" of this processor. The
instruction set is “hardwired” in the CPU and determines the machine language for the CPU. The
more complicated the instruction set is, the slower the CPU works. Processors differed from one
another by the instruction set. If the same program can run on two different computer brands they are
said to be compatible. Programs written for IBM compatible computers will not run on Apple
computers because these two architectures are not compatible.
The control Unit and the Arithmetic and Logic unit of a computer system are jointly known as the
Central Processing Unit (CPU). The CPU is the brain of any computer system. In a human body, all
major decisions are taken by the brain and the other parts of the body function as directed by the
brain. Similarly, in a computer system, all major calculations and comparisons are made inside the
CPU and the CPU is also responsible for activating and controlling the operations of other units of a

computer system.
Fig 2.03: CPU is the brain of computer which performs arithmetic, logical and control
operations
CHECK YOUR PROGRESS

Explain the function of Arithmetic Logical Unit for a computer.
Elaborate on the importance of Control Unit
Discuss the feature of a Central Processing Unit
2.4 MEMORY SYSTEM IN A COMPUTER

Computer memory is used for the following purpose.
• To store instructions to execute a program.

• To store data.
Primary memory and secondary memory are the two types of computer memory. Primary
memory can be accessed directly by the processing unit.The data can come from a secondary storage
device like a floppy disk or from an input device like a keyboard. When the computer is performing
any task the data that has to be processed is stored in the primary memory. The content of the primary
memory is lost after the computer is shut down. RAM is an example of primary memory. Secondary
memory unlike primary memory stores and retrieves data. Secondary memory includes devices like
magnetic disks, floppy disks, etc. and these are located outside the computer. Since secondary
memory is less expensive than that of primary memory, the size of primary memory is less than that
of secondary memory.
CHECK YOUR PROGRESS

Explain the function of memory for a computer.

Elaborate on the concepts of primary and secondary memory.
Give examples of primary and secondary memory.
2.5 CAPACITY OF PRIMARY MEMORY

Memory is the best essential element of a computer because computer can’t perform simple tasks.
The performance of computer mainly based on memory and CPU. Memory is internal storage media
of computer that has several names such as majorly categorized into two types, Main memory and
Secondary memory.
1. Primary Memory / Volatile Memory.
2. Secondary Memory / Non Volatile Memory.
2.5.1. Primary Memory / Volatile Memory:

Primary Memory also called as volatile memory because the memory can’t store the data
permanently. Primary memory select any part of memory when user want to save the data in memory
but that may not be store permanently on that location. It also has another name i.e. RAM.
Random Access Memory (RAM)
The primary storage is referred to as random access memory (RAM) due to the random selection
of memory locations. It performs both read and write operations on memory. If power failures
happened in systems during memory access then you will lose your data permanently. So, RAM is
volatile memory. RAM categorized into following types.
●DRAM - Dynamic RAM : loses its stored information in a very short time (for millisec.) even
when power supply is on. D-RAM’s are cheaper & lower.
●SRAM-Static RAM: SRAM is random access memory (RAM) that retains data bits in its
memory as long as power is being supplied. Unlike dynamic RAM (DRAM), which stores bits in
cells consisting of a capacitor and a transistor, SRAM does not have to be periodically refreshed.
Static RAM provides faster access to data and is more expensive than DRAM.
●RDRAM- (Rambus Dynamic Random Access Memory) is a memory subsystem that promises
to transfer up to 1.6 billion bytes per second. The subsystem consists of the random access memory
(RAM), the RAM controller, and the bus (path) connecting RAM to the microprocessor and devices
in the computer that use it.
2.5.2 Secondary Memory / Non Volatile Memory:

Secondary memory is external and permanent memory that is useful to store the external storage
media such as floppy disk, magnetic disks, magnetic tapes and etc cache devices. Secondary memory
deals with following types of components.

Read Only Memory (ROM) :
ROM is permanent memory location that offer huge types of standards to save data. But it work
with read only operation. No data lose happen whenever power failure occur during the ROM
memory work in computers.
ROM memory has several models such names are following.
PROM: Programmable Read Only Memory (PROM) maintains large storage media but can’t
offer the erase features in ROM. This type of RO maintains PROM chips to write data once and read
many. The programs or instructions designed in PROM can’t be erased by other programs.
EPROM : Erasable Programmable Read Only Memory designed for recover the problems of
PROM and ROM. Users can delete the data of EPROM thorough pass on ultraviolet light and it
erases chip is reprogrammed. Electrically Erasable Programmable Read Only Memory similar to the
EPROM but it uses electrical beam for erase the data of ROM.
Cache Memory: Mina memory less than the access time of CPU so, the performance will
decrease through less access time. Speed mismatch will decrease through maintain cache memory.
Main memory can store huge amount of data but the cache memory normally kept small and low
expensive cost. All types of external media like Magnetic disks, Magnetic drives and etc store in
cache memory to provide quick access tools to the users.
Register
The CPU processes data along with instructions with high speed. Data also gets processed
between the different units of the computer. Transferring the processed data with high speed is
important, so that the computer uses many special memory units called registers. Registers store data
or information temporarily, but they are not part of the main memory and pass it on as instructed by
the control unit.
CHECK YOUR PROGRESS

Explain the concept of volatile memory with examples.
Elaborate on the concepts of non-volatile secondary memory with example.
Discuss various types of primary memory.
Explain various types of secondary memory
2.6 SECONDARY STORAGE

Alternatively referred to as external memory is secondary memory and auxiliary storage, a
secondary storage device is a non-volatile device that holds data until it is deleted or overwritten.
Secondary storage is necessary because memory, or primary storage, loses its data when a computer
is turned off whereas secondary storage does not. Therefore, it is commonly known as non-volatile

storage. Secondary storage is about two orders of magnitude cheaper than primary storage.
Consequently, hard drives (a prime example of secondary storage) are the go-to solution for nearly all
data kept on today's computers.
2.6.1 Magnetic Tape

Magnetic tape is a type of physical storage media for different kinds of data. It is considered an
analog solution, in contrast to more recent types of storage media, such as solid state disk (SSD)
drives. Magnetic tape has been a major vehicle for audio and binary data storage for several decades,
and is still part of data storage for some systems.
Originally, magnetic tape was designed to record sound. In computing, it holds binary data. In
recent years, magnetic tape devices have become more scarce with the emergence of digital imaging
and audiovisual media storage. Magnetic tape was used in many of the larger and less complex
mainframe computers that predated today’s personal computers. One use of magnetic tape that still
exists is tape vaulting for the storage of physical records. In this process, technicians and other
professionals backup digital data to magnetic tape to secure it in physical vaults as a redundant
strategy in the event of disasters or other emergencies.
2.6.2 Magnetic Disc

A magnetic disk is a storage device that uses a magnetization process to write, rewrite and access
data. It is covered with a magnetic coating and stores data in the form of tracks, spots and sectors. The
disk rotates at a very high speed inside the computer drive. Data can be stored on both the surfaces of
the disk. Information or data is recorded on the tracks of a disk surface in the form of tiny magnetic
spots. Each disk is made up of a number of invisible concentric circles called tracks. where tracks are
the circular divisions of the disk. Tracks are further divided into sectors that contain blocks of data.
All read and write operations on the magnetic disk are performed on the sectors.
2.6.3 Floppy disc

The floppy disk drive also known as floppy or FDD is the primary removable storage medium
for a personal computer. The FDD, once called a mini disk, is the primary medium for getting
voluminous information into and out of a micro computer system. The advantage of the floppy disk
is that it is removable, and so can be used to distribute software, to transfer data from one computer to
another, or to backup files from a hard disk. But compared to a hard disk, floppy disks are also
slower, offer relatively small amounts of storage, and can be easily damaged.
2.6.4 Optical Disc

An optical disc is an electronic data storage medium that can be written to and read using a low-
powered laser beam.The first optical disc stored data as micron-wide dots of light and dark. A laser
read the dots, and the data was converted to an electrical signal, and finally to audio or visual output.
. Optical disks can be categorized in the following ways.
Compact Disk Read Only Memory (CD-ROM) : The first optical discs to actually catch on
were Compact Discs, which encoded digital data instead of analog; this would set a precedent for all
later formats of optical disc. Each of the CD-ROM disk is approximately 4 ½ inches in diameter.
They can hold more than 600 MB of data. Reflective metals are used to produce CD-ROM disks.
During the process of manufacturing, CD-ROM is written by using a high power laser beam. The
access time is comparatively fast, the storage density is extremely high, and as a result, the storage
cost is brought down significantly. You cannot write or introduce alterations into the data contained
in CD-Rom as the CD-ROM is read only memory.
Write Once Read Many (WORM): A WORM allows the user to write data permanently into
the disk. Therefore, you can overcome the problem of not being able to write on a CD-ROM by using
WORM. However, it is not possible to erase the data after it is written on a WORM disk without
physically damaging the disk. Data can be recorded in a WORM disk from the keyboard. OCR
equipment, video scanner and other devices. The advantage of using WORM disk storage medium is
that any document in a WORM can be accessed very fast, (less than 30 seconds) WORM disk storage
medium can store data up to gigabytes (10 bytes).
Erasable Optical Disk:An erasable optical disk is the one which can be erased and then loaded
with new data content all over again. These generally come with a RW label. These are based on a
technology popularly known as Magnetic Optical which involves the application of heat on a precise
point on the disk surface and magnetizing it using a laser. Erasable optical disks are based on a
technology called magnetic optical (MO). It applies a laser beam to write and re-write the data. You
can use erasable optical disks as a substitute for conventional disks. Data can be written, erased and
re-written on erasable optical disks. To write a data bit on to the surface of the erasable optical disk,
the MO drive’s laser beam heats a small, well-defined point on the disk’s surface and then magnetizes
it.
CHECK YOUR PROGRESS

Explain the concept of secondary storage.
Elaborate on the purpose of secondary storage.
Discuss various types of secondary storage devices.
Explain the concept of WORM (write once read many) devices.
2.7 SUMMARY
• A computer accepts data through input; it stores data in its storage medium processes the
data according to the user’s need and also provides the output in a desired format.
• The computer system is divided into three different units for its operation. They are Central
Processing Unit, Control Unit and Arithmetic Logical Unit.
• Input, storage, processing, output and control – a computer has these five basic operations.
• Input is the process of inserting programs and data into the computer system, whereas output
is the method of producing results from the data for getting useful information.
• The storage unit of a computer is mainly divided into two parts – primary storage and
secondary storage. This unit explains the devices used for these two types of storage and also
their usefulness. The Central Processing Unit (CPU) is useful for both interpreting and
executing almost all of the commands it receives from the computer’s hardware and software.
• Additional memory is needed in all the computer systems. This additional memory is called
secondary storage or auxiliary memory.
2.8 KEY TERMS

Impact printers: Uses the familiar typewriter approach of hammering a typeface against the
paper and inked ribbon.
Magnetic Ink Character Recognition (MICR): Used primarily by banks to process large volume
of drafts and cheques.
Non-Impact Printers: Do not impact or hit a ribbon to print. Non-impact printers use ink-jet
technologies and electro-static chemicals.
Optical Character Recognition (OCR): The technique required to unit the direct reading of any
kind of printed character.
Optical Mark Reader (OMR): The technique of Optical Mark Reader is used for objective type
tests.
Scanner: An optical device required to input any graphical matter and display a back on the
computer monitor.
Floppy disk: A Low-cost secondary storage device mostly used for personal computer systems.
Magnetic Tape: Used in large computers (e.g. mainframe computers) to store a huge volume of
data for a longer time.
2.9 END QUESTIONS

1. Write short notes on (a) Control Unit (b) Random Access Memory (RAM)
2. Draw a block diagram to illustrate the basic organization of computer system and
explain the functions of various units.
3. Describe the three different types of optical disks.
4. What operations does a computer perform?
5. Explain input devices.
6. What are the parts of Central Processing Unit?
7. Explain output devices.
8. Explain the process of input for a computer.
9. Explain various types of input devices.
10. Explain the function of storage for a computer.
11. Explain various types of output devices.
12. Explain the function of Arithmetic Logical Unit for a computer.
13. Elaborate on the importance of Control Unit
14. Discuss the feature of a Central Processing Unit
15. Explain the function of memory for a computer.
16. Elaborate on the concepts of primary and secondary memory.

17. Give examples of primary and secondary memory.
18. Explain the concept of volatile memory with examples.
19. Elaborate on the concepts of non-volatile secondary memory with example.
20. Discuss various types of primary memory.
21. Explain various types of secondary memory
22. Explain the concept of secondary storage.
23. Elaborate on the purpose of secondary storage.
24. Discuss various types of secondary storage devices.
25. Explain the concept of WORM (write once read many) devices.
26. Explain the difference between a RAM and ROM.
2.10 REFERENCES
1. Phillips, T (2000) The Antikythera Machanism I. American Mathematical Society. Retrieved
2006-04-05.
2. Shannon C.E. (1940) A Symbolic Analysis of Relay and Switching Circuits, Massachusetts
Institute of Technology.
3. Verma, G and Mielke, N. (1988) Reliability Performance of ETOX Based Flash Memories.
IEEE International Reliability Physics Symposium.
4. Lavington, Simon (1998), A History of Manchester Computers(2nd) Swindon: The British
Computer Society.
5. Digital Equipment Corporation (1972) (PDF). PDP-11/40 Processor Handbook Maynard,
MA: Digital Equipment Corporation.
6. Meuer, Hans; Strohmaier, Erich; Simon; Dongarra, Jack (2006-11-13). ‘Architechtures Share
Over Time’. TOP500. Retrieved 2006-11-27.

UNIT 3: SOFTWARE APPLICATIONS
3.0 BEFORE WE BEGIN

In the first two units we were introduced to the concepts of Computer in general and Computer
Organisation. In the first unit, we studied the journey of mankind to quest of computers. The
prehistoric man discovered laws of arithmetic which helped him in his survival. As the man
progressed the number-crunching kept on becoming more and more complicated. We required more
skilled people or techniques which would make number-crunching easier. In this process, devices like
abacus, Napier’s bones, Leibnitz machine, slide rule, analytical engine, analog computers and digital
computers got introduced. We saw the journey of digital computers in the five generations, from
vacuum tubes to Integrated Circuits, microprocessors and Artificial Intelligence. We also studied
various types of computers like servers, workstations, mainframe and supercomputers.
In the second Unit, we took a closer look at the computer organisation. We studied the
‘hardware’ part. You may have heard the terms like ‘hardware’ and ‘software’. Hardware is tangible
aspects of computers. Here, ‘tangible’ means those things which you can sense through vision, touch,
smell, taste and sound. You can see and touch a keyboard, display, mouse, printouts, printers,
scanners, modems, pen drives, etc. Hence we say they are ‘hardware’, But you cannot actually feel
through your senses a program, algorithm or plan of action. You may take print out of a code or
program but that is just a representation of the program and not the program itself. A program,
operating system, algorithm, method is an abstract, intangible part hence we call them as software.
The computer obeys instructions in a pre-defined way, which we call as program. The
instructions are arranged in sequential order and may have decision on what to do when specific
conditions are met. These computer programs may be devised by a user for his specific purpose. Such
programs are usually called user program. There are some other programs which take care of the
computer system itself. For example, the computer uses programs which help run other programs and
does various things when the system is turned on and turned off. Such programs are called Operating
Systems. Then, there are programs which do things which are required by general people. Such
programs are sold or distributed free for general people. Word Processing is one such example. The
general user are expected to learn how to use such program. We call them application software.
Application software, or simply applications, are often called productivity programs or end-user
programs because they enable the user to complete tasks, such as creating documents, spreadsheets,
databases and publications, doing online research, sending email, designing graphics, running
businesses, and even playing games! Application software is specific to the task it is designed for and
can be as simple as a calculator application or as complex as a word processing application. When
you begin creating a document, the word processing software has already set the margins, font style
and size, and the line spacing for you. But you can change these settings, and you have many more
formatting options available. For example, the word processor application makes it easy to add color,
headings, and pictures or delete, copy, move, and change the document's appearance to suit your
needs.
So let us begin our journey to this interesting field.

3.1 UNIT OBJECTIVES
• Describe important issues related with software applications.

• Describe Word Processing
• Discuss Databases
• Explain the functions of a Database
• Define different types of Databases
• Explain the importance of Queries
• Describe Graphics Programs
• Describe File Transfer Protocol
• Explain File Transfer Protocol
• Elaborate Chat/Instant Messaging
• Discuss Project Management Program
• Describe Integrated Software.
3.2 WORD PROCESSING

Word processing is an application program that allows you to create letters, reports, newsletters,
tables, form letters, brochures, and Web pages. Using this application program you can add pictures,
tables, and charts to your documents. You can also check spelling and grammar. In this lesson, we
will learn Word 2007 and use its features, tools and techniques. All Professional Documents will be
discussed using this package only.
3.2.1 MAIN FEATURES OF WORD PROCESSING

The main features are:
• You can create professional documents fast, using builtin and custom templates.
• You can easily manage large documents using various features like the ability to create table
of contents, index, and cross-references.
• You can work on multiple documents simultaneously
• With the help of mail merge, you can quickly create merge documents like mass mailings or
mailing labels.
• AutoCorrect and AutoFormat features catch typographical errors automatically and allow
you to use predefined shortcuts and typing patterns to quickly format your documents.
• The print zoom facility scales a document on different paper sizes, and allows you to print
out multiple pages on a single sheet of paper.
• The nested tables feature supports putting one table inside another table.
• You can export and save your word documents in PDF and XPS file format.
Although word processors differ significantly, all word processors offer the basic features
given below:

• Word-wrap: automatic arrangement of text in lines of specified length without the necessity
of touching the return key.
• Discretionary Hyphenation: option of inserting a hyphen to break a word that ends a line: the
hyphen does not print if later editing moves the word to the middle of a line.
• Justification: automatic alignment of text to both the left and right margins.
• Adjustment: realignment of text to new margin and tab settings.
• Alignment: positioning text or numbers to specified margin and tab settings.
• Decimal Alignment: positioning columns of numbers with the decimal points vertically
aligned.
• Indents: the setting of temporary margins within a document differing from the primary
margins used.
• Centering text on a line.
• Insertion: the entry of new text within previously typed material without erasing the existing
material.
• Overstriking: the substitution of new text for old by typing over the old text.
• Deletion: erasure of text from the screen, or of whole documents from the disk.
• Search and Replace: moving directly to specified words or parts of words within a document
and replacing them with different words or word portions.
• Copying or Cutting: the duplication or moving of blocks of text within a document.
• Boilerplate: the separate storage and retrieval of blocks of text from which standard
documents can be built.
• Pagination: automatic division of a document into pages of specified numbers of lines.
• Page Numbering: automatic sequential numbering of pages.
• Headers and Footers: option of creating standard blocks of text that will automatically appear
at the top or bottom of each page in a document.
• Footnoting: automatic sequential numbering of footnotes and positioning of the footnotes at
the bottom of their appropriate pages during pagination.
• Table of Contents and Index Generators. Programs that create these based on the text of a
document.
• Form Letter Merging: automatic combining of a form letter with a mailing list to generate
multiple copies of the letter with the different addresses and other variable information filled
in.
• Automatic Spelling Checker and Corrector. Program that compares words in the text against
an on-line dictionary, flagging items not found in the dictionary and offering alternative
spellings and a means of correcting the errors.
CHECK YOUR PROGRESS

What are the special features of a word processer.
Explain in brief (in context of word processing): Word-wrap, Discretionary Hyphenation,

Justification, Adjustment, Alignment.
Describe the concepts (in context of word processing): Decimal Alignment, Indents, Centering,
Insertion, Over striking.
Elaborate the concepts of: Deletion, Search and Replace, Copying or Cutting, Boilerplate, &

Pagination
Explain the concepts: Page Numbering, Headers and Footers, Footnoting, Table of Contents and
Index Generators
Define the concepts: Form Letter Merging, Automatic Spelling Checker and Corrector.
3.2.1 The ‘Create File’ Menu

New
This option is used to create a new file. This can be done using “control N” (keep “Ctrl” key
pressed and then press N). The first document offered to you is ‘blank document’. See the following
figure for the screenshot.
Fig 3.01: “New Document” screen in Microsoft Word 2007
You can create a document based on a template. You can try to use a few of them to see what
they look like. You can customize it for future use. To do this, you have to modify the settings for the
normal paragraph style and different style for headings. You can then save the result as a document
template. To do this, click on ‘save as’, then ‘save as type’ and select Document Template (*.dot or
*.dotx)’. Suggest a name for the template (such as Class 7.dot or Class7.dotx), and then click on the
save button.
You can get more templates through the Internet. Most of them are aimed at general purpose.

3.2.2 The Format Menu
You can change the appearance of your document to match the style you have chosen for your
work after creating a text or copying it from elsewhere. Your documents will look better together if
you have a consistent house style.
This decides the typeface or style of the text. It is better to avoid using more than two different
types of fonts on any page of a document. Research reveals that sans serif fonts such as aria; are
easier to read on screens while serif fonts are easier to read on a page.
For emphasis you can use color, bold or italic.
Font
This decides the typeface or style of the text. It is better to avoid using more than two different
types of fonts on any page of a document. Research reveals that sans serif fonts such as aria; are
easier to read on screens while serif fonts are easier to read on a page.
For emphasis you can use color, bold or italic.
3.2.3 The Print Option

This option helps you to send the file to the printer to get a hard copy.

Fig 3.02: In Word2007, you have to click on “Office” icon shown as “1” and then click on
“Print” shown as “2” for getting print-outs
Steps for printing the documents-
1.On the File tab, click Print.
2.Under Printer, click the down arrow and pick a printer.
a.If you don’t see any printers listed: You’ll need to add one in the Windows Control Panel
(see: ‘Add a Device’ in Windows Help for details).
b.If you don't have a network or wireless printer:You’ll want to make sure your printer is
physically connected to your computer. See your printer’s documentation for details.
3.Under Settings, click the down arrow next to Print All Slides, and then pick the slides you want
to print:
Print Preview
The Print Preview gives you an the exact preview of what will be printed. You can save on

printing costs by using print preview option unit you are certain the document appears as you want it
to. It can be opened from the File menu or the (Ctrl+W) button.
CHECK YOUR PROGRESS
Explain how new document is created in Microsoft Word.
Discuss the Format menu in Microsoft Word.
Describe the process of print in Microsoft Word.
3.3 SPREADSHEETS
Basic layout
A spreadsheet consists of cells arranged in rows and columns. Each cell can hold text, a number,
or a mathematical formula. A cell is referred to by column and row, e.g., the upper left cell is cell A1.
The cell right below that is A2, etc. Column width and row height can be adjusted by dragging the
separation line between columns (or rows) to the desired size. See between column B and C below.

Fig 3.03: Example of a spreadsheet (Microsoft Excel 2007)
Entering data
Before carrying out most commands, you must first select the part of the worksheet you want to
work with. You may select a single cell or a range of cells, but a formula will only be applied to one
cell at a time. When you PR20021118 2 click the cell you want to select, it will be surrounded by a
dark border. To select a range of cells, click at the first cell and drag the mouse pointer to select the
rest of the cells. Alternatively, click at the first cell, hold down the shift key, and click at the last cell
in the range. The cells between the two clicks will be selected.
Microsoft Excel formulas - the basics
In MS Excel, formulas are equations that perform various calculations in your worksheets.
Though Microsoft has introduced a handful of new functions over the years, the concept of Excel
spreadsheet formulas is the same in all versions of Excel 2016, Excel 2013, Excel 2010, Excel 2007
and lower.
●All Excel formulas begin with an equal sign (=).
●After the equal symbol, you enter either a calculation or function. For example, to add up values
in cells B1 through B5, you can either:
○Type the entire equation: =B1+B2+B3+B4+B5
○Use the SUM function: =SUM(B1:B5)
●Press the Enter key to complete the formula.
Elements of Microsoft Excel formulas
When you make a formula in Excel, you can use different elements to supply the source data to
the formula and indicate what operators should be performed on those data. Depending on the
formula type that you create, it can include any or all of the following parts:
Constants - numbers or text values that you enter directly in a formula, like =2*3.
Cell references - reference to a cell containing the value you want to use in your Excel formula,
e.g. =SUM(A1, A2, B5).
To refer to data in two or more contiguous cells, use a range reference like A1:A5. For example,
to sum values in all cell between A1 and A5, inclusive, use this formula:
=SUM(A1:A5).
Names - defined name for a cell range, constant, table, or function, for example
=SUM(my_name).
Functions - predefined formulas in Excel that perform calculations using the values supplied in
their arguments.
Operators - special symbols that specify the type of operation or calculation to be performed
CHECK YOUR PROGRESS
Explain the use of formulas in Microsoft Excel.
Discuss how data is entered in Microsoft Excel.
Describe the basic layout of Microsoft Excel.
3.4 HTML EDITOR

The text editor is a type of program used for editing files. The text editors are often provided with
operating system or software development packages. These can be change configuration files and
programming language source code, for example HTML code. Macromedia Dreamweaver publishes
and edits in a more visual way known as ‘What You See Is What You Get (WYSIWYG) ‘
environment whereas Notepad allows you to edit the HTML coding. With the help of the
Dreamweaver, you can prepare cascading style sheet, the table, row span, column span, etc. and even
prepare XML code. It provides the coding scheme for JavaScript, ASP.NET and other programming
languages for NET platform. One main advantage of using Dreamweaver is that it provides various
templates in which you can the site and correlate with HTML code. A template is a common structure
of a website that most of your web pages use. Usually websites follow a standard, for e.g., you would
have a header, a navigation bar and a footer that is common to all your pages Imagine that your site
has 25 pages. If you need to make one small change, let’s say adding a new link, you would need to
go to each of those 25 pages and change it manually. But using a template you only need to change it
in the template and all the pages get updated automatically. For example, you want to search the
coding part for searched information ‘Information Technology’ on Google and want to modify the
text. This facility is available in between text where the format EDIT is given. You can modify the
HTML coding with the help of Notepad HTML editor. You can understand the complete scenario
with the help of examples. For example, you can use this web browser to review HTML document
you are building and also to review pages in other web browsers for comparison. Various templates
are to be previewed in web browser. You can modify the HTML page. For this, you need to choose
view source.
CHECK YOUR PROGRESS

Describe the HTML editors.
Explain what is meant by WYSYWYG in context of HTML editors?
3.5 DESKTOP PUBLISHING

Desktop publishing (also known as DTP) uses a personal computer and the WYSIWYG page
layout software to make publication documents on a computers for either large-scale publishing or
small-scale local multifunction peripheral output and distribution.
Desktop publishing is commonly used to describe page layout shills. However, the skills and
software are not limited to paper and book publishing. The same skills and software are often used to
create graphics for point of sale displays, promotional items, trade show exhibits, retail package
designs and outdoor signs. In very simple words, it could be said that it is a page maker application.
The document made with the help of Desktop publishing is of high-quality comprising of well-
organized and precisely aligned text and graphics formatted on each. Today, desktop publishing is
used for producing all printed material like book pages, book covers, documents, pamphlets, fliers,
etc.
3.6 TYPES (LEVELS) OF SOFTWARE

The hardware alone cannot perform any particular calculation or manipulation without being
instructed exactly what to do and how to do it. These set of instructions are as important, if not more,
than the hardware, and are called software. The software acts as an interface between the user and the
computer. Software or a program can be defined as a complete set of instructions written by the
programmer which enables the computer to obtain the solution to a problem (with or without the
data). Software is a general term that is used to describe any single program or a group of programs.
There are three main types of computer software system software, programming software and
application software. System software comprises of the operating system, device drivers, server and
other such software components Programming software helps the programmer to write programs by
offering him tools like compilers, editors, linkers, debuggers and more. Application software which is
one of the most important types of software helps to execute particular tasks or functions.
3.6.1 System Software

System software refers to all the files and programs that build up the operating system and
contains system files namely libraries of functions, system services, drivers for printers and hardware,
system preferences, and other configuration files. It also includes the programs, such as assemblers,
compilers, file management tools, system utilities and debuggers. Hence, system software contains all
the programs, languages and documentation supplied by the manufacturer with the computer. These
programs allow the user to communicate with the computer and write or develop his/her own specific
programs. The system software is automatically installed on the computer system at the time of
operating system installation. This software can be updated using the ‘Windows Update’ for
Windows operating system. This following is the scientific definition of system software.
‘System software is computer software designed to operate the computer hardware and to provide
and maintain a platform for running application software.’
The following are the significant types of system software.
• The computer BIOS and device firmware: It provides the essential functionality for operating
and controlling the hardware of the computer system.
• The operating system: The important examples are Microsoft Windows, Mac OSX and
Linux. It supports the computer parts to function collectively and perform the tasks such as to
transfer data between memory and disks, to provide output on a display device. The platform
to run high-level system software and application software is also provided by system
software.
• Utility software: It helps in analyzing , configuring, optimizing and maintaining the computer
system.
3.6.2 Programming Software

A programming tool or software that is used to create, debug, maintain and support other
programs and applications. Basically, the term refers to comparatively simple programs that can be
combined in specific order to perform a task. Programming software provides tools and assists a
programmer in writing computer programs in various programming languages which a computer can
understand and compile to produce the required output. The programming tools include compilers,
debuggers, interpreters, linkers and text editors.
We will learn about the programming languages in a later part of this Unit.
3.6.3 Application Software

Application software makes direct use of the capacities of a computer to execute a particular task.
It is able to control text, graphics and numbers. It can be in the form of software meant to execute a
certain single task like word processing database operations or playing audio/video media.
Types of Application Software
Word Processing Software: Word processing software enables the user to create and edit
documents. The most well-known examples of such software are MS Word, WordPad, Notepad, etc.
Database Software: Database is an organized, planned collection of data. A computer is

dependent on database software to organize the data and allow the user to execute various database
operations. Database software helps the user to store and retrieve data from databases. Some popular
database software programs are Oracle, MS Access, and so on.
Spreadsheet Software: Some examples of the program spreadsheet software include Apple
Numbers, Lotus 1-2-3 and Excel. Spreadsheet software allows users execute computations. This kind
of application software simulates paper worksheets by depicting numerous cells that forms a grid.
Multimedia Software: This kind of application software enables the users to produce and
maneuver audio and video media. Media files can be played by utilizing this type of software.
Players, audio converters, video encoders decoders, and burners are some of the types of multimedia
software. Media player and Realplayer are examples of this type of software.
Presentation Software: The type of software that is utilized to represent data in a slideshow
format is called presentation software. Three functions can be included in this kind of software,
namely, methods to include graphics in the text, functionality of executing the slide shows, and
editing that allows insertion and formatting of text. Microsoft Powerpoint is a good example of this
kind of presentation software.
Examples of Application Software
Enterprise of Application Software: The requirements of organization’s data flow and its
processes are dealt with by this kind of software. The financial processes in an organization and
customer relationship management activities are managed by utilizing this type of enterprise
software.
Information Worker Software: Information worker software controls the management of

information and the individual needs of creation in addition to individual projects within a
department. Resource management tools, personal management systems, and documentation tools are
also covered by this category of application software.
Educational Software: It has the capability of operating tracking progress and tests. It also has
the potential of possessing collaborative software. It is frequently utilized in self-learning and
teaching purposes.
Simulation Software: This kind of simulation software has applications in both entertainment
and research and is expended to imitate abstract or physical systems. Scientific simulators and flight
simulators are good example of simulation software.
Content Access Software: This type of software is generally utilized to access content without
any kind of editing. Media players and web browsers are the most common examples of content
access software.
CHECK YOUR PROGRESS

Describe the concept of desktop publishing.
Describe system software with examples.
Explain the concept of programming software.
Elaborate the meaning of application software.
Describe various types of application software.
3.7 DATABASE
Databases are software developed to analyze, produce, edit, and manipulate data.
In order to be worthy for a databases, the data must comprise records which finish information on
individual places, cases, features, people, etc. Moreover, each record may hold various areas each of
which carries one item of information, for example:
Field content can be of many types comprising fixed or variable length, numeric or text.
The number and interpretation of the field must be invariant for each class of records e.g. each
record in the class of ‘streets’ may hold fields for name, length, surface, type.
There can be various forms of records in a database.
An airline reservation database may contain the following classes of associated items and
records:
Flight: number, departure and arrival times, aircraft
Passengers : name, phone, flight numbers
Aircraft : type, registration number, number of seats
Crew: names of pilot, co-pilot, cabin crew, home city
Functions of a database
Utilization of customized screens and developing and editing records
Utilization of customized report forms, including totals and subtotals to print reports (sums up
groups of records)
Choosing records on the basis of user-defined patterns Updating records on the basis of new
information
Associating records, e.g., to decide arrival time for a passenger by linking the passenger’s record
with the correct flight record.

3.7.1 Types of Databases
Data can be any portion of information, whereas the database is an integrated collection of
logically related data stored in electronic files as records. The databases are uniquely designed for
specific purpose and use a combination of strategies. These are structured in tabular format consisting
of rows and columns to collect and store information to be retrieved, added, updated or removed as
per the user requirements. Databases are categorized into various types on the basis of storage or the
scope of data. The data storage in a database file permits the user to access the stored information for
different purpose. Hence, database is classified into following different types on the basis of purpose
of data storage or the scope of information.
3.7.1.1 Operational database
These databases stock elaborate data required to back up the performances of the entire
organization. They are also known as transaction databases, production databases, and subject-area
databases (SADB). Some examples are:
• Inventory databases
• Personal databases
• Customer databases
3.7.1.2 Analytical database
These databases gather information and data distilled from distinguished outside and operational
databases. They consist of summarized data and information most wanted by an organization’s
management and other end-users. Some people also refer to analytical databases as information
databases, multidimensional databases, or management databases.
3.7.1.3 Data warehouse
A data warehouse gathers data from previous and current years- data took out from the
organization’s several operational databases. It turns out to be the central origin of data that has been
integrated, edited, standardized, and tested so that it can be utilized by managers and other end-user
professionals across an organization.
3.7.1.4 Distributed database
These are databases of departments and local workgroups at some work sites, branch offices,
manufacturing plants, and regional offices. These databases can cover sections of both common user
and common operational databases, in addition to data used and generated and used only at a user’s
own location.
3.7.1.5 End-user database
These databases consist of a kind of data files formulated by end-users at their workstations. This
can be represented by collection of documents in spreadsheets, downloaded files, and word
processing.
3.7.1.6 External database

These databases furnish approach to external, privately-owned information online- available for a
fee to end-users and organizations from commercial services. From external database, access to a
library of information can be obtained by paying a specific fee from commercial online services with
or without any charge from different websites in the Internet.
3.7.1.7 Hypermedia databases on the Web
These are a set of interlinked multimedia pages on a website. They comprise of a home page and
other hyperlinked pages of multimedia or mixed media such as photographic images, text, graphic,
audio, video clips, etc.
3.7.1.8 Navigational database
By adopting references from other objects, queries discover objects primarily in navigational
databases. Traditionally, navigational interfaces are procedural. At the same time one can quality
some modern systems like XPath as being simultaneously declarative and navigational.
3.7.1.9 In-memory databases
For computer data storage, in-memory databases chiefly depend upon main memory. This is
different from database management systems which, in turn, utilize a disk-based storage mechanism.
3.7.1.10 Document-oriented databases
Developed for document-oriented applications, document-oriented databases are specific

computer programs. These systems may be carried out as a layer above a comparative database or an
object database. As counterbalanced to relational databases, document-based databases do not stock
data in tables with uniform-sized fields for each record. On the other hand, they gather each record as
a document that has specific characteristics. Any number of fields of any length can be added
together to a document. Fields can also hold-in many pieces of information.
CHECK YOUR PROGRESS
Describe the concept of database.
Describe types of databases with examples.
Explain the concept of operational databases.
Elaborate the concept of analytical databases.
Describe concept of data warehouse.
Computer languages

A computer language is a language that can be understood by the computer. It is the computer’s
native language. Computer languages serve the same purpose as human languages. They are a means
of communication. Let us understand the similarities and differences between computer languages
and human languages.
A natural or human language is the language, that people like us speak daily, such as English,
Hindi, French or German. It is made up of words and rules known as lexicon and syntax, respectively.
These words are joined to make meaningful phrases according to the rules of the syntax. A computer
language also consists of lexicon and syntax, i.e., characters, symbols and rules of usage that allow
the user to communicate with the computer.
The main difference between a natural language and computer language is that natural languages
have a large set of words (vocabulary) to choose from while computer languages have a limited or
restricted set of words. Thus, fewer words but more rules characterize a computer language.
Each and every problem to be solved by the computer needs to be broken down into discrete
logical steps before the computer can execute it. The process of writing such instructions in a
computer or programming language is called programming or coding.
Just as computer hardware has improved over the years, programming languages have also
moved from machine-oriented languages (that used strings of binary 0s and 1s) to problem-oriented
languages (that use common English terms). All computer languages can, however, be classified
under the following categories:
• Machine language (first-generation language)

• Assembly language (second-generation language)
• High-Level language (third-generation language)
The characteristics of these are explained in the sections that follow.
Machine language
The computer can understand only a binary-based language. This is a combination of 0s and 1s.
Instructions written using sequences of 0s and 1s are known as machine language. First-generation
computers used programs written in machine language.
Machine language is very cumbersome to use and is tedious and time consuming for the
programmer. It requires thousands of machine language instructions to perform even simple jobs like
keeping track of a few addresses for mailing lists.
Every instruction in machine language is composed Of two parts- the command itself, also
known as the ‘operation code’ or opcode (like add, multiply, move etc.) and the ‘operand’ which is
the address of the data that has to be acted upon; for example, a typical machine language instruction
may be represented as shown here.The number of operands varies with each computer and is
therefore computer dependent.
It is evident from the above that to program in machine language, the programmer needs
information about the internal structure of the computer. He will also need to remember a number of
operation codes and also need to keep track of the addresses of all the data items (i.e., which storage
location has which data item). Programming in machine language can be very tedious, time
consuming and still highly prone to errors. Further, locating such errors and effecting modifications is
also a mammoth task, quite understandably, programmers felt the need for moving away from
machine language.
Assembly language
Assembly language was the first step in the evolution of programming languages; it used
mnemonics (symbolic codes) to represent operation codes and strings of characters to represent
addresses. Instructions in assembly language may look as shown in the accompanying example.
Assembly language was designed to replace each machine code by an understandable mnemonic
and each address with a simple alphanumeric string. It was matched to the processor structure of a
particular computer and was therefore (once again) machine dependent. This meant that programs
written for a particular computer model could not be executed on another one. In order words, an
assembly language program lacked portability.
A program written in assembly language needs to be translated into machine language before the
computer can execute it. This is done by a special program called ‘Assembler’ which takes every
assemb ly language program and translates it into its equivalent machine code. The assembly
language program is known as the source program, while the equivalent machine language program is
known as the object program. It may be useful to know that the assembler is a system program
supplied by the computer manufacturer. Second-generation computers used assembly language.
The lack of portability of programs (written using machine or assembly languages) between
various computer systems led to the development of high-level languages. Since they allowed a
programmer to overlook a lot of low-level particulars of the hardware of the computer system, they
were called high-level language programs. And it was obvious that if the syntax, mnemonics and rule
and regulations of the programming language were closer to the natural language, it would be easier
for the programmer to program and the lesser the possibility of introducing errors (or bugs) into the
program. Hence, third-generation languages, which were algorithmic and procedural, came into being
in the mid-1950s. They were designed to solve a particular problem. They contained commands that
are particularly suited to one type of application. For example, a number of languages were designed
to process scientific or mathematical problems. Others emphasized on commercial applications.
These languages varied very little between different computer systems, unlike machine or symbolic
languages. But a compiler or an interpreter program was required to translate these machine codes.
Once again, the high-level program is called the source code while its equivalent language program is
referred to as the object code.
Easy-to-learn feature, machine independence, easier maintenance and portability contributed to

the popularity of high-level languages. Slow program execution was the main disadvantage since
programs needed to be converted into machine language (by an interpreter or a compiler) before they
could be execute.
Some high-level languages
FORTRAN: FORTAN (FORmula TRANslation)was the first high-level language developed by

John Backus at IBM in 1956.

FORTRAN has a number of various with FORTRAN IV being one of the earlier popular
versions. In 1977, the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) published standards for
FORTRAN with a view to standardizing the form of the language used by manufactures. This
standardized version is called FORTRAN 77:
COBOL: COBOL (Common Business Oriented Language), the first language used for
commercial applications, was developed under the leadership of Grace Hopper, a US Navy
Programmers, with a group of computer manufacturers and users in 1959. The maintenance and
further growth of the language was handed over to a group called CODASYL (COnfereace on
Data Systems Languages).
It is written using statements that resemble simple English and can be understood easily; for
example; to add two numbers (stored in variables A and B), a simple statement in COBOL would
be: ADD A TO B GIVING C.
COBOL was standardized by ANSI in 1968 and in 1974. COBOL became the most widely used
programming language for business and data processing applications.
BASIC: BASIC (Beginner’s All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code) was developed as a

teaching tool for undergraduate students in 1966 by john Kemeny and Thomas Kurtz, two
professors at Dartmouth College. Eventually BASIC was used as the main language amongst the
personal computer users.
A minimum version of BASIC was standardized by ANSI and is so simple that it has been
incorporated in every subsequent version of BASIC. Some versions of BASIC include MBASIC
(Microsoft BASIC), and CBASIC (Compiler based BASIC) .
One of the newer versions of BASIC, commonly known as Visual Basic, has also evolved from
the original BASIC language. It contains various statements and functions that can be used to create
applications for a Windows or GUI environment.
PASCAL: PASCAL was designed by Nicholas Wirth, a Swiss professor, in1971. It was
developed as a more structured language used for teaching which Wirth named after the French
mathematician Blaise Pascal, who also designed the first successful mechanical calculator. His
primary aim was to provide a language that supported beginners learning good problem solving and
programming techniques.
In addition to manipulation of numbers, PASCAL supports manipulation of vectors, matrices,

strings of characters, records, files and lists, thereby supporting non-numeric programming. Hence, it
has proved to be an attractive language for professional computer scientists. PASCAL has been
standardized by ISO (International Standards Organization) and ANSI.
PL/I (Programming Language I) was developed by IBM in the 1960s and was the first
language tht was attempted to be used for a variety of applications rather than one particular area like
business or science or artificial Intelligence.
LISP (LISt Processing) was developed in the early 1950s but was implemented in the 1959 by
John McCarthy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. It become a standard language with the

artificial intelligence community and was a program that could easily handle recursive.
C language was developed by Dennis Ritchie of Bell Laboratories in order to implement the
operating system UNIX.
X ++ was developed by the Bjarne Stroustrup of Bell Laboratories by enhancing C, C++ is

also used to write procedural programs like C but the reason for its increased popularity is
perhaps because of its capability to handle the rigours of object-oriented programming. C and
C++ are the most extensively used general-purpose languages amongst programming experts.
JAVA Java is again an object-oriented language like the C++ but is a simplified version with
extra features. It is less prone to programming errors. It was developed for writing programs that
could be safely and easily executed through the Internet. It is free from any kind of common virus
threats. It is basically a network-oriented language that can develop website pages with enhanced
multimedia features using small java programs known as java applets, Java is a secure to use over the
Internet and is a platform independent language.
Fourth-generation languages
Fourth-generation languages are non-procedural. This means that they signify what needs to be
accomplished but do not specify how to do it. Fourth-generation languages are characterized by
simple English-like instructions and a quick and easy learning process. They are so user-friendly that
with little training and practice an individual can write his/her own programs and generate the desired
reports. It does not require the services of a professional programmer to do the same. The first fourth-
generation language, called FORTH, was developed by Charles Morre, an American astronomer, in
1970. FORTH is mainly used for industrial and scientific control applications. FOCUS is another
commonly known fourth-generation language.
Fifth-generation languages
Fifth-generation languages are an outgrowth of research in the area of artificial intelligence. They
are, however, still in their infancy.
PROLOG (PROgramming LOGic): It is a logic programming language. It is a general

purpose language often associated with artificial intelligence and computational linguistics. It has
a purely logical subset, called pure Prolog, as well as a number of extra logical features.
CHECK YOUR PROGRESS
Describe the concept of computer languages.
Describe the meaning of machine languages.
Explain the concept of assembly language.

Elaborate the concept of higher language with examples.
3.8 QUERIES
The query is a request for a particular data from a database. The results of a query can be printed,
stored or transferred to other programmers.
Queries consist of questions sent to the database in a predefined data format. Moreover, queries
are the primary mechanism for recovering information from a database, Structured Query Language
(SQL) standard query formats are utilized by many database management systems.
Owing to the variety of users of a database (having varying technical skills) a board range of
querying technique has been developed. Four of these techniques are as follows:
Query language
This is a language consisting of statements of simple English. The query is executed, and the
results of the request can be stored/viewed or printed. Query languages are comparatively easy to
learn and SQL is very popular language. Many database management systems have tools that
facilitate construction of a query in SOL.
Query-by-example
A graphical Query-by-Example (QBE) tool may also be used instead of learning the grammar or
vocabulary associated with a query language. The tool lists several possible alternatives which the
user may choose from. Option such as selection of particular tables, fields and values in a field are
possible here. In some cases, the QBE tool develops a query language statement that is executed.
Forms
A form is a special window/screen that permits a user to view/change the data in the database.
Forms should validate data as it is entered to minimize the entry of incorrect data. A properly
designed form should be consistent in look and functioning with other data entry screens in the
DBMS.
Report generator
Reports are an essential part of any business activity. DBMSs have modules called report
generators writers. The report generator facilitates careful designing of reports. When the design
process is complete, the product can be linked to the databases where the relevant information will be
extracted. The information extracted is formatted in the exactly the same manner as specified in the
report writer. The user can view the information on the terminal or can print it as well.

3.9 GRAPHICS PROGRAMS
The term Graphics program refers to any computer device or program that makes a computer of
displaying and manipulating graphics (pictures). The term also refers to the images themselves; for
example, laser printers and plotters are graphics devices because they allow the computer to output
pictures. A graphics monitor is a display monitor that can display pictures. A graphics board/graphics
card is a printed circuit board that allows the computer to display pictures.
Some other graphics applications are listed below:
Desktop publishing: It provides a full set of word-processing features as well as good control
over placement of text and graphics so that you are able to create books, newsletters, pamphlets,
advertisements, brochures and other documents.
Paint program: It allows you to draw rough freehand drawings. The images are stored as
bitmaps and can easily be edited/modified.
Illustration/design program: It supports more advanced features than paint programs,

particularly for drawing curved lines. The images are usually stored in vector-based format. These
programs are usually called draw programs.
Presentation graphics program: It lets you make bar charts, pie charts, graphics and other types
of images for slide shows and reports. The charts can be based on data imported from spreadsheet
applications.
Animation software: It enables you to chain and sequence a series of images to simulate
movement. In such a program, each image is used like a frame in a movie.
CAD software: It enables architects and engineers to draft designs of complex machines or
building.
In general, applications that support graphics require a powerful CPU and a huge memory. Many
graphics applications, such as computer animation systems, need more computing power than is
available on personal computers and can be run only on specially designed graphics computers. This
holds true for all three-dimensional computer graphics applications.
Besides, graphics software requires a graphics monitor and support for one of the many graphics
standards; for example, most PC programs need VGA graphics. If a computer does not have built-in
support for a specific graphics system, one can insert a video adapter card in it to get support for
graphics applications.
The quality of most graphics devices is determined by their resolution, i.e., how many points per
square inch (PSI) they can represent, and their colour capabilities.
A fast desktop computer with a good-memory is required for graphics work. Though a mouse can
be used for drawing, graphics tablets are also often used for Computer Aided Design (CAD)
applications.

Vector and Bitmapped Graphics
Vector graphics and bitmapped graphics are the two major graphic categories in a computer. To
learn about computer graphics, it is essential to understand these two formats and how they are
created and intertwine.
Drawing, Scanning and Painting
Pictures are ‘drawn’ into vector graphics images us ing a mouse or a digitizer tablet. Hard copy
pictures are converted into bitmaps with the help of scanners and digital cameras. In a paint program,
bitmaps can also be ‘painted’ freehand using the screen as a canvas.
Vector vs. Bitmap
Complex illustrations can be drawn with the help of drawing (vector) programs. Nevertheless,
nothing can offer the realism of an original scene unless it is photographed with the help of an
analogue camera and scanned in, or the picture is taken through a digital camera
Vector Graphics for CAD and Drawing
Vector graphics are a series of points, lines, arcs and other geometric shapes.
These graphics are produced in CAD and drawing programs. When you draw, each line is stored
as a vector, which is two end points on an X-T matrix; for example, a square becomes four vectors,
one for each side. A circle becomes dozens or hundreds of tiny straight lines, the number of which
increases/decreases according to the resolution of the drawing. The entire image is collectively stored
in the computer as a list of vectors.
Vector graphics are easily scaled
A vector graphic is a collection of graphic elements, i.e., lines, squares, rectangles and circles.
Though assembled together, each of these elements maintains its own identity and can be selected and
altered independently from others. Moreover, own identity and can be selected and altered
independently from others. Moreover, any of these elements can be instantaneously reduced or
enlarged.
From Vectors to Bitmaps
Although there are X_Y plotters that ‘draw’ images directly from a list of vectors most printers
today are inkjet, which need bitmapped images as input. Similarly, all monitors today display
bitmaps. Thus, for the screen and the printer, the vectors need to be converted into bitmaps
(‘rasterized’). The rasterization process (changing of vectors into bitmaps) is executed by the
operating system and the printer language.
3D Graphics
3D (three dimensional) images use vector graphics, but 3D CAD and drawing programs are
considerably different from 2D CAD and drawing programs. Graphics are produced in the 3D form in
a three-dimensional workspace. They can be seen from any angle by merely rotating them, whereas in
a 2D program, the object would have to be redrawn completely. 3D programs can make the drawing
with lights and shadows, and camera angles and light sources are used to represent the graphic objects
as actual, real-world elements.
The 3D stage
In 3D graphics, objects are drawn on a three-dimensional stage where the current view is attained
from the camera angle and light sources, comparable to the real world.
Bitmapped Graphics for Imaging and painting
Bitmapped graphics, also called raster graphics, are made up of dots like what we see in
television images. Each image contains hundreds of horizontal rows, each row containing hundreds of
‘pixels’ (dots). Bi tmapped graphics are made manually in the image editor and paint programs. They
can also be obtained from hard copy (paper) documents using scanners, from the real world using
digital cameras, and from a running software application using screen capture programs.
Many Formats, All Digital
Unlike television, which uses one standard (NTSC) for the country, there are dozens of
bitmapped graphics standard (JPEG, TIFF, BMP, etc.) Also unlike television, which records and
displays the dots as infinitely variable shades and colours (analogue). Computer graphics have a finite
number of shades and colours (digital).
Bits and Pixel
When you scan an image or paint an object in the computer, the bitmap is made in a reserved area
of memory, with a particular number of bits allocated to each pixel. The simplest monochrome
bitmap takes one bit (on/off) per pixel.
Grayscale bitmaps store a number for each pixel corresponding to a shade of grey: for example, 8
bits holds 254 gray levels plus black and white.
From Bitmaps to other Bitmaps
Although bitmapped images are already in a raster format, they have to be combined with other
bitmaps, vector and text elements and be ‘rasterized’ to the screen’s resolution or size of the printed
page .
CHECK YOUR PROGRESS
Describe the concept of graphic programs.
Describe the difference between bitmap and vector graphics.

Explain the concept of CAD software.
Elaborate the concept of 3D modeling software.
Discuss the concepts of pixels and bits.
3.10
DRAWI
NG PROGRAMS
A
graphics program is used for making drawing and illustrations. It maintains an image in vector
graphics format, which permits all elements of the picture to be isolated, moved and modified
independently.
Drawing programs and CAD programs are similar in many ways; however, drawing programs
generally offer a large number of special effects for fancy illustrations, whereas CAD programs
provide precise dimensioning and positioning of each graphic element so that the objects can be
moved to other systems for engineering analysis, processing and manufacturing.
Adobe Illustrator, CorelDraw and Macromedia Freehand are some popular drawing programs for
Windows. Illustrator and freehand are drawing programs, available for the Macintosh. Compare these
with the Paint program.
Drawing vs. Painting
While more painting tools are being added to drawing programs and more drawing tools are
offered in paint programs, their inherent structure continues to be completely different from each
other. Drawing programs (vector graphics) permit the creation of objects that can be worked upon
(isolated, moved and resized) independently. On the other hand, Paint programs (bitmapped graphics)
provide a canvas that can be painted with electronic paint.
Components (Hardware and Software) Needed for Computer Graphics
In addition to the basic computer, a number of special devices and software are required for
computer graphics. In hardware, a high-resolution, colour monitor is often needed and some input
tools, e.g. mouse and joystick, and some hard-copy devices, e.g., high-resolution colour printer, may
be needed as well. In software, some special-purpose utilities (device-dependent and device,
independent) are needed for handling processing in computer graphics.
Applications of Computer Graphics
Computer graphics have many interesting applications. Three common applications are graphic-

user interface (GUI), computer-aided design (CAD) and computer games.
3.11 PAINT
Paint (formerly Paintbrush), commonly known as Microsoft Paint, is a simple raster graphics
editor that has been included with all versions of Microsoft Windows. The app opens and saves files
in Windows bitmap (BMP), JPEG, GIF, PNG, and single-page TIFF formats. The app can be in color
mode or two-color black-and-white, but there is no grayscale mode. For its simplicity, it rapidly
became one of the most used applications in the early versions of Windows, introducing many to
painting on a computer for the first time. It is still widely used for simple image manipulation tasks.
In July 2017, Microsoft added Paint to the list of Windows features to be deprecated in the
Windows 10 Fall Creators Update. Though it will no longer receive updates, Microsoft will make it
available in the Windows Store for free.
Fig 3.04: Microsoft Paint Opening Screen (Version 6.1 bundled with Windows 7 Professional)
3.11.1 History
The first version of Paint was introduced with the first version of Windows, Windows 1.0, in
November 1985. It was a licensed version of ZSoft Corporation's PC Paintbrush, and supported only
1-bit monochrome graphics under a proprietary "MSP" format. This version was later superseded by
Paintbrush in Windows 3.0, with a redesigned user interface, color support and support for the BMP
and PCX file formats.
Microsoft shipped an updated version of Paint with Windows 95 and Windows NT 4.0, which
allows saving and loading a custom set of color wells as color palette (.pal) files. This functionality
only works correctly if the color depth of images is 16-bits per pixel (bpp) or higher. Later versions of
Paint do not support this feature.
In Windows 98, Windows 2000 and Windows ME, Paint can save images in JPEG, GIF and PNG
formats when appropriate plug-ins are installed. Such plug-ins are included with Microsoft Office and
Microsoft PhotoDraw. This also allows Paint to use transparent backgrounds. Support for PCX files
was dropped. Starting with Windows ME, the canvas size expands automatically when larger images
are opened or pasted, instead of asking.
In Windows XP and later, Paint uses GDI+ and therefore can natively save images as BMP,
JPEG, GIF, TIFF and PNG without requiring additional graphics filters. However, alpha channel
transparency is still not supported. Support for acquiring images from a scanner or a digital camera
was also added to Paint.
In Windows Vista, the toolbar icons and default color palette were changed. Paint in Windows
Vista can undo a change up to 10 times, compared to 3 in previous versions; it also includes a slider
for image magnification and a crop function. This version saves in JPEG format by default.
3.11.2 Windows 7 and later

The version of Paint in Windows 7 and later, features a ribbon in its user interface. It also
features "artistic" brushes composed of varying shades of gray and some degree of transparency that
give a more realistic result. To add to the realism, the oil and watercolor brushes can only paint for a
small distance before the user must re-click (this gives the illusion that the paint brush has run out of
paint). In addition, Paint can now undo up to 50 subsequent changes. It also has anti-aliased shapes,
which can be resized freely until they are rasterized when another tool is selected. This version
supports viewing (but not saving) transparent PNG and ICO file formats and saves files in the .png
file format by default.
Text can now be pasted into text boxes that don't have enough room to display the text. A text
box can then be enlarged or reshaped appropriately to fit the text if desired. Previous versions of Paint
would display an error message if a user tried to paste more text than there was room for.
The Windows 8 version of Paint mostly corrects a long-standing defect from previous versions
involving inability to scroll the window when editing in Zoom view over 100%. However, when
inserting text in Zoom view, the user cannot move the text beyond the zoomed viewport while the
text window is in edit mode with either the mouse or keyboard.
3.11.3 Future
In the April 2017 "Creators Update" for Windows 10, Microsoft released Paint 3D alongside
Paint. In addition to traditional two-dimensional drawing tools, Paint 3D also allows three-
dimensional models to be imported and manipulated, and integrates with a Microsoft-operated
website known as Remix 3D for sharing 3D creations.
Microsoft announced that upon the release of the Fall Creators Update of Windows 10, Paint
would become a Windows Store app, as opposed to a Windows component.
3.11.4 Features
Paint has a few functions not mentioned in the help file: a stamp mode, trail mode, regular
shapes, and moving pictures. For the stamp mode, the user can select part of the image, hold the Ctrl
key, and move it to another part of the canvas. This, instead of cutting the piece out, creates a copy of
it. The process can be repeated as many times as desired, as long as the Ctrl key is held down. The
trail mode works exactly the same, but it uses the ⇧ Shift instead of the Ctrl key.
The user may also draw straight horizontal, vertical, or diagonal lines with the pencil tool,
without the need of the straight line tool, by holding the ⇧ Shift key and dragging the tool. Moreover,
it is also possible to thicken or thin a line either before or simultaneously while it is being drawn via
Ctrl++ (NumPad only) or Ctrl+- (NumPad only). To crop whitespace or eliminate parts of a graphic,
the blue handle in the lower right corner can be dragged to increase canvas size or crop a graphic.
Users can also draw perfect shapes (which have width equal to height) using any shape tool by
holding down the ⇧ Shift while dragging.
Older versions of Paint, such as the one bundled with Windows 3.1, allow controlling the
drawing cursor with the use of arrow keys as well as a color-replace brush, which replaced a single
color underneath the brush with another without affecting the rest of the image. In later versions of
Paint, the color erase brush may be simulated by selecting the color to be replaced as the primary
color, and the one it is replaced with as the secondary color, and then right-click dragging the erase
tool. Controlling the drawing cursor with arrow key is no longer supported, but it is possible to
simulate it with the MouseKeys accessibility feature of Microsoft Windows.
3.11.5 Support for indexed palettes
By default, almost all versions of Paint create 24-bit images and are generally unable to properly
downgrade them to indexed palettes using fewer than 24 bits per pixel. When saving an image in a
format that uses indexed palettes with fewer than 24 bits per pixel, a warning message appears about
the loss of quality. Paint does not utilize binary, color or gray scale dithering or palette optimization,
and the image will be saved with usually irreversibly scrambled colors.
Paint is nonetheless able to correctly load and save indexed palettes in any of the supported
formats if an image is opened as an 8-bit or otherwise indexed palette image. In that case, the image's
palette is preserved when saving. However, there is no way to see the actual palette; color choices for
brushes, text and erasers as well as user-defined colors will be limited to the closest available color in
the indexed palette.
CHECK YOUR PROGRESS
Describe the concept of drawing programs.
Describe the difference between drawing and painting in software.
Explain the concept and purpose of MS Paint software.
Elaborate the features of Microsoft Paint.

Discuss the history of MS Paint.
3.12 ANIMATION AND VIDEO PROGRAMS

3.12.1 Computer Animation
Computer animation is the process used for generating animated images. The more general term
computer-generated imagery (CGI) encompasses both static scenes and dynamic images, while
computer animation only refers to the moving images. Modern computer animation usually uses 3D
computer graphics, although 2D computer graphics are still used for stylistic, low bandwidth, and
faster real-time renderings. Sometimes, the target of the animation is the computer itself, but
sometimes film as well.
Computer animation is essentially a digital successor to the stop motion techniques using 3D
models, and traditional animation techniques using frame-by-frame animation of 2D illustrations.
Computer-generated animations are more controllable than other more physically based processes,
constructing miniatures for effects shots or hiring extras for crowd scenes, and because it allows the
creation of images that would not be feasible using any other technology. It can also allow a single
graphic artist to produce such content without the use of actors, expensive set pieces, or props. To
create the illusion of movement, an image is displayed on the computer monitor and repeatedly
replaced by a new image that is similar to it, but advanced slightly in time (usually at a rate of 24, 25
or 30 frames/second). This technique is identical to how the illusion of movement is achieved with
television and motion pictures.
Fig 3.05: An example of computer animation which is produced in the "motion capture"
technique
For 3D animations, objects (models) are built on the computer monitor (modeled) and 3D figures

are rigged with a virtual skeleton. For 2D figure animations, separate objects (illustrations) and
separate transparent layers are used with or without that virtual skeleton. Then the limbs, eyes, mouth,
clothes, etc. of the figure are moved by the animator on key frames. The differences in appearance
between key frames are automatically calculated by the computer in a process known as tweening or
morphing. Finally, the animation is rendered.
For 3D animations, all frames must be rendered after the modeling is complete. For 2D vector
animations, the rendering process is the key frame illustration process, while tweened frames are
rendered as needed. For pre-recorded presentations, the rendered frames are transferred to a different
format or medium, like digital video. The frames may also be rendered in real time as they are
presented to the end-user audience. Low bandwidth animations transmitted via the internet (e.g.
Adobe Flash, X3D) often use software on the end-users computer to render in real time as an
alternative to streaming or pre-loaded high bandwidth animations.
Some notable producers of computer-animated feature films include:
• Animal Logic - Films include Happy Feet (2006), Walking with Dinosaurs (2013) and The
Lego Movie (2014)
• Keyframe Digital Productions Inc. - Imaginext (2002), Pinky Dinky Doo (2002), The
Littlest Light On The Christmas Tree (2004), Peggy's Little Harbour (2012), Terrific Trucks
(2016), Ollie (2017),
• Blue Sky Studios - Films include Ice Age (2002), Rio (2011), The Peanuts Movie (2015)
• DreamWorks Animation - Films include Shrek (2001), Kung Fu Panda (2008), How to
Train Your Dragon (2010)
• Illumination Entertainment — Films include Despicable Me (2010), Minions (2015), The
Secret Life of Pets (2016)
• Industrial Light & Magic - Films include Rango (2011) and Strange Magic (2015)
• Pixar - Films include Toy Story (1995), Finding Nemo (2003), Cars (2006)
• Reel FX Animation Studios - Films include Free Birds (2013) and The Book of Life
(2014)
• Sony Pictures Animation - Films include Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs (2009), The
Smurfs (2011), Hotel Transylvania (2012)
• Sony Pictures Imageworks - Films include The Angry Birds Movie (2016)
• Walt Disney Animation Studios - Films include Tangled (2010), Wreck-It Ralph (2012),
Frozen (2013)
• Warner Animation Group - Films include The Lego Movie (2014), and Storks (2016)
List of 2D animation software

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Operating system or
Name Developer License
environment
Ajax Animator Antimatter15 GPL Web application
OpenToonz BSD Windows, OS X, Linux
Tupi Maefloresta GPL Windows, OS X, Linux,

Operating system or
environment
other Unix-like
Pencil2D Matt Chang GPL Windows, OS X, Linux
Matthias
SWFTools GPL Windows, OS X, Linux
Kramm
Robert
Synfig GPL Windows, OS X, Linux
Quattlebaum
Flipnote Studio Nintendo Freeware Nintendo DS
Flipnote Studio
Nintendo Freeware Nintendo 3DS
3D
Pivot
Stickfigure Peter Bone Freeware Windows
Animator
Adobe After
Adobe Systems Trialware Windows, Mac OS X
Effects
Adobe Animate Adobe Systems Trialware Windows, OS X
Animatron Animatron LLC Freemium Web application
Moho (Anime Smith Micro
Trialware Windows, OS X
Studio) Software
Antics 2-D Antics
Trialware Windows
Animation Workshop
Apple iAd
Apple Inc. Registerware OS X
Producer
Autodesk
Jim Kent Freeware/Open source DOS
Animator Pro
Autodesk Commercial proprietary
Autodesk Windows
Animator Studio software
DigiCel
DigiCel Inc. Trialware Windows, OS X
FlipBook
DrawPlus Serif Freemium Windows
Express
Trialware Windows
Animator
Mediator MatchWare Trialware Windows
Commercial proprietary
Motion Apple Inc. OS X
software
Plug-in for Adobe After
ParticleIllusion Trialware
Effects
RETAS Commercial proprietary
RETAS Windows, OS X
STUDIO software
SWiSH Max SwishZone Trialware Windows

Operating system or
environment
Toon Boom Commercial Proprietary Windows, Mac OS X,
Harmony
Animation Inc. software Trialware Linux
Sanchit Windows, Macintosh,
Toufee Trialware
Bhatnagar Linux
Digital Video Commercial proprietary Windows, OS X, Mac
Toonz
S.p.a. software OS
TVPaint TVPaint Commercial proprietary Windows, Mac OS X,
Animation Developpement software Linux
Discontinued Apple II series,
Fantavision Broderbund commercial proprietary Commodore, Apple IIGS,
software DOS
List of 3D animation programs

(Source:Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia)
Title License
3D Movie Maker Discontinued
Aladdin4D
software
Anim8or Freeware
Autodesk 3ds Max Trialware
Autodesk Maya Trialware
Autodesk MotionBuilder Trialware
Autodesk Softimage Discontinued (Trialware)
Trialware, software as a
Adobe Photoshop
service
Trialware, software as a
Adobe After Effects
service
Blender GPL v2 or later
Bryce Discontinued (Trialware)
Carrara
software
Cinema 4D Proprietary
Clara.io Proprietary
DAZ Studio Freemium
Electric Image Animation Demoware

Title License
System
Element 3D
software
Houdini Trialware
iClone Trialware
K-3D GPL v2
LightWave 3D Trialware
Messiah Proprietary
MikuMikuDance Freeware
Modo Trialware
Moviestorm Trialware
Muvizu Trialware
Poser
software
Shade 3D Trialware
SketchUp Freemium
Source Filmmaker Freeware
ZBrush
software
3.12.2 Computer-assisted vs. computer-generated

To animate means, figuratively, to "give life to". There are two basic methods that animators
commonly use to accomplish this.
Computer-assisted animation is usually classed as two-dimensional (2D) animation. Creators

drawings either hand drawn (pencil to paper) or interactively drawn(drawn on the computer) using
different assisting appliances and are positioned into specific software packages. Within the software
package the creator will place drawings into different key frames which fundamentally create an
outline of the most important movements. The computer will then fill in all the "in-between frames",
commonly known as Tweening. Computer-assisted animation is basically using new technologies to
cut down the time scale that traditional animation could take, but still having the elements of
traditional drawings of characters or objects.
Three examples of films using computer-assisted animation are Beauty and the Beast, The Road
to El Dorado and Tarzan.
Computer-generated animation is known as 3-dimensional (3D) animation. Creators will design

an object or character with an X,Y and Z axis. Unlike the traditional way of animation no pencil to
paper drawings create the way computer generated animation works. The object or character created
will then be taken into a software, key framing and tweening are also carried out in computer
generated animation but are also a lot of techniques used that do not relate to traditional animation.
Animators can break physical laws by using mathematical algorithms to cheat, mass, force and
gravity rulings. Fundamentally, time scale and quality could be said to be a preferred way to produce
animation as they are two major things that are enhanced by using computer generated animation.
Another positive aspect of CGA is the fact one can create a flock of creatures to act independently
when created as a group. An animal's fur can be programmed to wave in the wind and lie flat when it
rains instead of programming each strand of hair separately.
A few examples of computer-generated animation movies are Tangled, Toy Story, Frozen, Inside
Out, Shrek, Finding Nemo, Antz, Ice Age, Despicable Me and Zootopia.
3.12.3 Video Programs

Video editing software is an application program which handles the post-production video editing
of digital video sequences on a computer non-linear editing system (NLE). It has replaced traditional
flatbed celluloid film editing tools and analogue video tape-to-tape online editing machines.
NLE software is typically based on a timeline interface paradigm where sections of moving
image video recordings, known as clips, are laid out in sequence and played back. The NLE offers a
range of tools for trimming, splicing, cutting and arranging clips across the timeline. As digital NLE
systems have advanced their toolset, their role has expanded and most consumer and professional
NLE systems alike now include a host of features for colour manipulation, titling and visual effects,
as well as tools for editing and mixing audio synchronized with the video image sequence.
Once a project is complete, the NLE system can then be used to export to movie in a variety of
formats in context which may range from broadcast tape formats to compressed file formats for the
Internet, DVD and mobile devices.
3.12.4 List of video editing software

The following is a list of video editing software.
Free and open-source
Active and stable
Avidemux (Linux, FreeBSD, macOS, Windows)
Blender VSE (Linux, FreeBSD, macOS, Windows)
Cinelerra (Linux)
Kdenlive (Linux, FreeBSD, macOS, Windows)
LiVES (BSD, IRIX, Linux, Solaris)
Natron (Linux, FreeBSD, macOS, Windows)

OpenShot Video Editor (FreeBSD, Linux, macOS, Windows)
Pitivi (Linux, FreeBSD)
Shotcut (Linux, FreeBSD, macOS, Windows)
Alpha/Unstable
VideoLan Movie Creator (VLMC) (Linux, macOS, Windows)
Proprietary
Active
ActivePresenter (Windows) – Also screencast software
DaVinci Resolve (macOS, Windows, Linux)
ivsEdits (Windows)
Freemake Video Converter (Windows)
Lightworks (Windows, Linux, macOS)
VideoPad Home Edition (Windows, macOS, iPad, Android)
WeVideo (Web app)
showbox.com (Windows, macOS)
VSDC Free Video Editor (Windows)
CHECK YOUR PROGRESS
Describe the concept of computer animation.
Describe the difference between 2D and 3D animation software.
Explain the importance of animation in industrial application.
Elaborate the difference between computer assisted and computer generated graphics.
Describe the importance of freeware video editors with examples.

3.13 PRESENTATION PROGRAMS
A presentation program is a software package used to display information in the form of a slide
show. It has three major functions: an editor that allows text to be inserted and formatted, a method
for inserting and manipulating graphic images, and a slide-show system to display the content.
3.13.1 Features
A presentation program is supposed to help both the speaker with an easier access to his ideas
and the participants with visual information which complements the talk. There are many different
types of presentations including professional (work-related), education, entertainment, and for general
communication. Presentation programs can either supplement or replace the use of older visual-aid
technology, such as pamphlets, handouts, chalkboards, flip charts, posters, slides and overhead
transparencies. Text, graphics, movies, and other objects are positioned on individual pages or
"slides" or "foils". The "slide" analogy is a reference to the slide projector, a device that has become
somewhat obsolete due to the use of presentation software. Slides can be printed, or (more usually)
displayed on-screen and navigated through at the command of the presenter. The slides can also be
saved as images of any image file formats for any future reference. Transitions between slides can be
animated in a variety of ways, as can the emergence of elements on a slide itself. Typically a
presentation has many constraints and the most important being the limited time to present consistent
information.
Many presentation programs come with pre-designed images (clip art) and/or have the ability to
import graphic images, such as Visio and Edraw Max. Some tools also have the ability to search and
import images from Flickr or Google directly from the tool. Custom graphics can also be created in
other programs such as Adobe Photoshop or Adobe Illustrator and then exported. The concept of clip
art originated with the image library that came as a complement with VCN ExecuVision, beginning in
1983.
With the growth of digital photography and video, many programs that handle these types of
media also include presentation functions for displaying them in a similar "slide show" format. For
example, Apple's iPhoto allows groups of digital photos to be displayed in a slide show with options
such as selecting transitions, choosing whether or not the show stops at the end or continues to loop,
and including music to accompany the photos.
Similar to programming extensions for an operating system or web browser, "add ons" or plugins
for presentation programs can be used to enhance their capabilities. For example, it would be useful
to export a PowerPoint presentation as a Flash animation or PDF document. This would make
delivery through removable media or sharing over the Internet easier. Since PDF files are designed to
be shared regardless of platform and most web browsers already have the plugin to view Flash files,
these formats would allow presentations to be more widely accessible.

Fig 3.06: A presentation using a presentation program.
Certain presentation programs also offer an interactive integrated hardware element designed to
engage an audience (e.g. audience response systems, second screen applications) or facilitate
presentations across different geographical locations through the internet (e.g. web conferencing).
Other integrated hardware devices ease the job of a live presenter such as laser pointers and
interactive whiteboards.
3.14 COMMUNICATION PROGRAMS

Communication software is used to provide remote access to systems and exchange files and
messages in text, audio and/or video formats between different computers or users. This includes
terminal emulators, file transfer programs, chat and instant messaging programs, as well as similar
functionality integrated within MUDs. The term is also applied to software operating a bulletin board
system, but seldom to that operating a computer network or Stored Program Control exchange.
3.14.1 History
E-mail started in 1965 as a way for multiple users of a time-sharing mainframe computer to
communicate. Basic text chat functionality has existed on multi-user computer systems and bulletin
board systems since the early 1970s. In the 1980s, a terminal emulator was a piece of software
necessary to log into mainframes and thus access e-mail. Prior to the rise of the Internet, computer
files were exchanged over dialup lines, requiring ways to send binary files over communication
systems that were primarily intended for plain text; programs implementing special transfer modes
were implemented using various de facto standards, most notably Kermit.
3.14.2 Chat
In 1985 the first decentralized chat system was created called Bitnet Relay, whereas Minitel
probably provided the largest chat system at the same time. In August 1988 the Internet Relay Chat
followed. CU-SeeMe was the first chat system to be equipped with a video camera. Instant messaging
featuring a buddy list and the notion of online presence was introduced by ICQ in 1996. In the days of
the Internet boom, web chats were very popular, too.
Chatting is a real-time conversation or message exchange that takes place in public or in private
groupings called chat rooms. Some chatrooms have moderators who will trace and block offensive
comments and other kinds of abuse. Based on visual representation chats are divided into text based
chat room just as were IRC and Bitnet Relay Chat, 2D – supporting graphic smilies; and 3D the
conversation in which takes place in 2D graphic surrounding.
CHECK YOUR PROGRESS
Describe the concept of presentation programs.
Describe the features of presentation programs.
Explain the importance of communication software.
Elaborate the concept of online chat.
3.15 THE FILE TRANSFER PROTOCOL (FTP)

The File Transfer Protocol (FTP) standard network protocol used for the transfer of computer
files between a client and server on a computer network.
FTP is built on a client-server model architecture and uses separate control and data connections
between the client and the server. FTP users may authenticate themselves with a clear-text sign-in
protocol, normally in the form of a username and password, but can connect anonymously if the
server is configured to allow it. For secure transmission that protects the username and password, and
encrypts the content, FTP is often secured with SSL/TLS (FTPS). SSH File Transfer Protocol (SFTP)
is sometimes also used instead; it is technologically different.
The first FTP client applications were command-line programs developed before operating
systems had graphical user interfaces, and are still shipped with most Windows, Unix, and Linux
operating systems. Many FTP clients and automation utilities have since been developed for
desktops, servers, mobile devices, and hardware, and FTP has been incorporated into productivity

applications, such as web page editors.
3.16 CHAT AND INSTANT MESSAGING

Online chat may refer to any kind of communication over the Internet that offers a real-time
transmission of text messages from sender to receiver. Chat messages are generally short in order to
enable other participants to respond quickly. Thereby, a feeling similar to a spoken conversation is
created, which distinguishes chatting from other text-based online communication forms such as
Internet forums and email. Online chat may address point-to-point communications as well as
multicast communications from one sender to many receivers and voice and video chat, or may be a
feature of a web conferencing service.
Online chat in a less stringent definition may be primarily any direct text-based or video-based
(webcams), one-on-one chat or one-to-many group chat (formally also known as synchronous
conferencing), using tools such as instant messengers, Internet Relay Chat (IRC), talkers and possibly
MUDs. The expression online chat comes from the word chat which means "informal conversation".
Online chat includes web-based applications that allow communication – often directly addressed, but
anonymous between users in a multi-user environment. Web conferencing is a more specific online
service, that is often sold as a service, hosted on a web server controlled by the vendor.

Fig 3.07: Example of Online Chat
3.16.1 Chatiquette
The term chatiquette (chat etiquette) is a variation of netiquette (Internet etiquette) and describes
basic rules of online communication. These conventions or guidelines have been created to avoid
misunderstandings and to simplify the communication between users. Chatiquette varies from
community to community and generally describes basic courtesy. As an example, it is considered
rude to write only in upper case, because it appears as if the user is shouting. The word "chatiquette"
has been used in connection with various chat systems (e.g. Internet Relay Chat) since 1995.
Chatrooms can produce a strong sense of online identity leading to impression of subculture.
Chats are valuable sources of various types of information, the automatic processing of which is
the object of chat/text mining technologies.
3.16.2 Instant messaging (IM)

Instant messaging (IM) is a type of online chat that offers real-time text transmission over the
Internet. A LAN messenger operates in a similar way over a local area network. Short messages are
typically transmitted between two parties, when each user chooses to complete a thought and select
"send". Some IM applications can use push technology to provide real-time text, which transmits
messages character by character, as they are composed. More advanced instant messaging can add
file transfer, clickable hyperlinks, Voice over IP, or video chat.
Non-IM types of chat include multicast transmission, usually referred to as "chat rooms", where
participants might be anonymous or might be previously known to each other (for example
collaborators on a project that is using chat to facilitate communication). Instant messaging systems
tend to facilitate connections between specified known users (often using a contact list also known as
a "buddy list" or "friend list"). Depending on the IM protocol, the technical architecture can be peer-
to-peer (direct point-to-point transmission) or client-server (an Instant message service center
retransmits messages from the sender to the communication device).
Instant messaging is a set of communication technologies used for text-based communication

between two or more participants over the Internet or other types of networks. IM–chat happens in
real-time. Of importance is that online chat and instant messaging differ from other technologies such
as email due to the perceived quasi-synchrony of the communications by the users. Some systems
permit messages to be sent to users not then 'logged on' (offline messages), thus removing some
differences between IM and email (often done by sending the message to the associated email
account).
IM allows effective and efficient communication, allowing immediate receipt of acknowledgment

or reply. However IM is basically not necessarily supported by transaction control. In many cases,
instant messaging includes added features which can make it even more popular. For example, users
may see each other via webcams, or talk directly for free over the Internet using a microphone and
headphones or loudspeakers. Many applications allow file transfers, although they are usually limited
in the permissible file-size.
It is usually possible to save a text conversation for later reference. Instant messages are often
logged in a local message history, making it similar to the persistent nature of emails.
3.17 PROJECT MANAGEMENT PROGRAMS

Project management software has the capacity to help plan, organize, and manage resource tools
and develop resource estimates. Depending on the sophistication of the software, it can manage
estimation and planning, scheduling, cost control and budget management, resource allocation,
collaboration software, communication, decision-making, quality management and documentation or
administration systems. Today, numerous PC and browser-based project management software and
contract management software solutions exist, and are finding applications in almost every type of
business.
3.17.1 Predecessors
The first historically relevant year for the development of project management software is 1896,

marked by the introduction of the Harmonogram. Polish economist Karol Adamiecki attempted to
display task development in a floating chart, and laid the foundation for project management software
as it is today. 1912 was the year when Henry Gantt replaced the Hrongram with the more advanced
Gantt chart, a scheduling diagram which broke ship design tasks down for the purposes of Hoover
Dam in early 1931. Today’s Gantt charts are almost the same as their original counterparts, and are a
critical part of all project management systems.
3.17.2 Emergence of the ‘project management’ term and modernized

techniques
The term project management was not used prior to 1954, when US Air Force General Bernard
Adolph Schriever introduced it for military purposes. In the years to follow, project management
gained relevance in the business world, a trend which had a lot to do with the formation of the
American Association of Engineers AACE (1956), and Rang and DuPont’s Critical Path Method
calculating project duration ever since 1957.
The trend is also related to the appearance of the Program Evaluation Review Technique (PERT)
in 1958. PERT went further with monitoring projects, and enabled users to monitor tasks, being at the
same time able to evaluate their quality, and to estimate the time needed to accomplish each of them.
As with Gantt charts and CPM, PERT was invented for military purposes, this time for the US Navy
Polaris missile submarine program.
In 1965, there was a new improvement in project management technology. The US department of
defense presented the work breakdown structure (WBS) to dissolve projects to even smaller visual
units, organizing them in hierarchical tree structure. WBS was an inspiration for Winston Royce’s
Waterfall Method (1970) where management phases are organized in a way which doesn’t allow a
new task to begin before the previous ones are completed.
3.17.3 The first project management products and associations
In the period between 1965 and 1969 were formed two of the leading project management
associations: the International Project Management Association (IPMA) in Europe, and the Project
Management Institute (PMI) which trains project management professionals and issues certificates.
With business shifting towards technology-based and paperless methods, the first project
management systems started to emerge. Oracle and Artemis launched their project managers in 1977,
while Scitor Corporation did the same in 1979. Many improvements followed in the upcoming
decades: in 1986, Carnegie Mellon University’s Software Engineering Institute introduced capability
maturity software, a five-level project management method for rapidly maturing processes, while in
1988 users met earned value management which added processes’ scope and cost to the schedule. The
trend continued with PRINCE2 (1996) which increased the number of processes to seven, because of
which developers considered designing products for managing complex projects. In 2001, they
adopted the Agile project management concept, and focused on adaptive planning and flexible
response to changes. In 2006, users were already able to trigger total cost management, a framework
that helps controlling and reducing costs in project management.
3.17.4 SaaS and cloud-based project management software

The SaaS (software-as-a-service) trend began in 2008, qualified by users as the most flexible type
of project management software for their teams. In 2009, US News classified project management as
one of the most demanded skills for obtaining a well-paid job.
From 2010 on, the most popular project management solutions were cloud-based, designed for
the needs of virtual teams looking to access information from any location or device. As a result,
2012 brought the first mobile project management apps users can apply on the go.
Trends
With the advent of the Internet-of-Things, project management software was developed to
incorporate testing technologies, development tools, and improved cyber security methods.
3.17.5 Tasks and activities

Scheduling
One of the most common project management software tool types is scheduling tools. Scheduling
tools are used to sequence project activities and assign dates and resources to them. The detail and
sophistication of a schedule produced by a scheduling tool can vary considerably with the project
management methodology used, the features provided and the scheduling methods supported.
Scheduling tools may include support for:
• Multiple dependency relationship types between activities

• Resource assignment and leveling
• Critical path
• Activity duration estimation and probability-based simulation
• Activity cost accounting
Providing information
Project planning software can be expected to provide information to various people or

stakeholders, and can be used to measure and justify the level of effort required to complete the
project(s). Typical requirements might include:
• Overview information on how long tasks will take to complete.

• Early warning of any risks to the project.
• Information on workload, for planning holidays.
• Evidence.
• Historical information on how projects have progressed, and in particular, how actual and
planned performance are related.
• Optimum utilization of available resource.
• Cost maintenance.
• Collaboration with each teammates and customers.
• Instant communication to collaborators and customers.

3.17.6 Types
Desktop
Project management software has been implemented as a program that runs on the desktop of
each user. Project management tools that are implemented as desktop software are typically single-
user applications used by the project manager or another subject matter expert, such as a scheduler or
risk manager.
Web-based
Project management software has been implemented as web application to be accessed using a
web browser. This may also include the ability to use a smartphone or tablet to gain access to the
application. Software as a service (SaaS) is also web-based and has become a common delivery
model for many business applications, including project management, project management
information system (PMIS) and project portfolio management (PPM). SaaS is typically accessed by
users using a thin client via a web browser.
Personal
A personal project management application is one used at home, typically to manage lifestyle or
home projects. There is considerable overlap with single user systems, although personal project
management software typically involves simpler interfaces. See also non-specialised tools below.
Single user
A single-user system is programmed with the assumption that only one person will ever need to
edit the project plan at once. This may be used in small companies, or ones where only a few people
are involved in top-down project planning. Desktop applications generally fall into this category.
Collaborative
A collaborative system is designed to support multiple users modifying different sections of the
plan at once; for example, updating the areas they personally are responsible for such that those
estimates get integrated into the overall plan. Web-based tools, including extranets, generally fall into
this category, but have the limitation that they can only be used when the user has live Internet access.
To address this limitation, some software tools using client–server architecture provide a rich client
that runs on users' desktop computer and replicates project and task information to other project team
members through a central server when users connect periodically to the network. Some tools allow
team members to check out their schedules (and others' as read only) to work on them while not on
the network. When reconnecting to the database, all changes are synchronized with the other
schedules.
Visual
A common problem in project management is a difficulty with both viewing and understanding
large amounts of fluctuating project data. To tackle this, some project management software utilize
information visualization, so that users can more easily find, analyze and make changes to their data.
To avoid information overload, the visualization mantra of “overview first, zoom and filter, then
details on demand” is often followed
CHECK YOUR PROGRESS
Describe the concept of FTP.
Describe the features of online chat and instant messages.
Explain the importance of project management software.
Elaborate the tasks and activities carried out by project management software.
3.18 INTEGRATED SOFTWARE

Integrated software is software for personal computers that combines the most commonly used
functions of many productivity software programs into one application.
The integrated software genre has been largely overshadowed by fully functional office suites,
most notably Microsoft Office, but at one time was considered the "killer application" type
responsible for the rise and dominance of the IBM PC in the desktop business computing world.
In the early days of the PC before GUIs became common, user interfaces were text-only and were
operated mostly by function key and modifier key sequences. Every program used a different set of
keystrokes, making it difficult for a user to master more than one or two programs. Programs were
loaded from floppy disk, making it very slow and inconvenient to switch between programs and
difficult or impossible to exchange data between them (to transfer the results from a spreadsheet to a
word processor document for example). In response to these limitations, vendors created
multifunction "integrated" packages, eliminating the need to switch between programs and presenting
the user with a more consistent interface.
The convenience of an all-in-one purchase as well as the potential for greater ease-of-use made
integrated software attractive to home markets as well as business, and packages such as the original
AppleWorks for the Apple II, Vizastar for the Commodore 64 and Jane for the Commodore 128 were
developed in the 1980s to run on most popular home computers of the day. Commodore even
produced the Plus/4 computer with a simple integrated suite built into ROM.
Context MBA was an early example of the genre, and featured spreadsheet, database, chart-
making, word processing and terminal emulation functions. However, because it was written in
Pascal for portability, it ran slowly on the relatively underpowered systems of the day. Lotus 1-2-3,
which followed it, had fewer functions but was written in x86 assembler, providing it with a speed
advantage that allowed it to become the predominant business application for personal computers in
the 1980s.

BYTE asked in 1984, "Why should owners of advanced, multifunction business programs that
are supposedly easy to use and that claim to solve all problems be compelled to purchase a utility like
Sidekick? It makes you wonder about all those advertising claims." Perhaps Framework and
Symphony represented the peak of integrated software products, amid questions about the genre's
viability under the new graphical user interfaces. The GUI on a Macintosh or Microsoft Windows,
based around a desktop metaphor and typically enforcing a set of user interface guidelines for
developers, enjoyed much greater consistency between standalone applications, removing one of the
main motivations behind integrated packages. Microsoft stated in 1985 that hardware limited the
power of all-in-one programs, and that simultaneously using multiple applications like Excel under
Switcher on the Macintosh—with common user interfaces and ability to share data—was preferable
to "fully integrated" software. Jerry Pournelle agreed, adding that "it's going to be difficult to sell full
integration to users. There's just too much to learn. Old hands looking for an improved text editor
may not care to change spreadsheets. Newcomers almost certainly won't want to learn about
spreadsheets, databases, text editors, and communications all at once." Also, "users want to be able to
pick and choose programs according to their particular needs".
However, reports of the death of integrated software under Windows were exaggerated. The
realities of software development and market considerations made integrated software still attractive
to some users. Claris moved its integrated program to Windows and called it ClarisWorks for
Windows. Developers of standalone products introduced integrated versions with additional abilities
like Wordperfect Works, which was based on an earlier competitor to AppleWorks made by Beagle
Bros. The 1990s also saw the rise of the office suite concept exemplified by Microsoft Office and
LibreOffice, which resemble integrated software but involve more complex software with greater
abilities that, in many cases, are also sold as standalone products.
3.19 SUMMARY
tables, and charts to your documents.
separation line between columns (or rows) to the desired size.
operating system or software development packages.These can be change configuration files and
programming language source code, for example HTML code.

Software or a program can be defined as a complete set of instructions written by the programmer
which enables the computer to obtain the solution to a problem (with or without the data). Software is
a general term that is used to describe any single program or a group of programs.
System software refers to all the files and programs that build up the operating system
and contains system files namely libraries of functions, system services, drivers for printers
and hardware, system preferences, and other configuration files.
combined in specific order to perform a task.
Application software makes direct use of the capacities of a computer to execute a

particular task. It is able to control text, graphics and numbers. It can be in the form of
software meant to execute a certain single task like word processing database operations or
playing audio/video media.
Databases are software developed to analyze, produce, edit, and manipulate data. In order to be
worthy for a databases, the data must comprise records which finish information on individual places,
cases, features, people, etc.
of communication.
stored or transferred to other programmers. Queries consist of questions sent to the database in a
predefined data format.
pictures.
A graphics program is used for making drawing and illustrations. It maintains an image in vector
independently.
in Windows bitmap (BMP), JPEG, GIF, PNG, and single-page TIFF formats.

computer animation only refers to the moving images.
functionality integrated within MUDs.
enable other participants to respond quickly.
Internet. A LAN messenger operates in a similar way over a local area network.
administration systems.
3.20 KEY TERMS

tables, and charts to your documents.

separation line between columns (or rows) to the desired size.
operating system or software development packages.These can be change configuration files and
programming language source code, for example HTML code.
Software or a program can be defined as a complete set of instructions written by the programmer
which enables the computer to obtain the solution to a problem (with or without the data). Software is
a general term that is used to describe any single program or a group of programs.
System software refers to all the files and programs that build up the operating system
and contains system files namely libraries of functions, system services, drivers for printers
and hardware, system preferences, and other configuration files.
combined in specific order to perform a task.
Application software makes direct use of the capacities of a computer to execute a

particular task. It is able to control text, graphics and numbers. It can be in the form of
software meant to execute a certain single task like word processing database operations or
playing audio/video media.
Databases are software developed to analyze, produce, edit, and manipulate data. In order to be
worthy for a databases, the data must comprise records which finish information on individual places,
cases, features, people, etc.
of communication.
stored or transferred to other programmers. Queries consist of questions sent to the database in a
predefined data format.
pictures.
A graphics program is used for making drawing and illustrations. It maintains an image in vector

independently.
in Windows bitmap (BMP), JPEG, GIF, PNG, and single-page TIFF formats.
computer animation only refers to the moving images.
functionality integrated within MUDs.
enable other participants to respond quickly.
Internet. A LAN messenger operates in a similar way over a local area network.
administration systems.
3.21 END QUESTIONS

1. What are the special features of a word processer.
2. Explain in brief (in context of word processing): Word-wrap, Discretionary Hyphenation,
Justification, Adjustment, Alignment.
3. Describe the concepts (in context of word processing): Decimal Alignment, Indents,
Centering, Insertion, Over striking.
4. Elaborate the concepts of: Deletion, Search and Replace, Copying or Cutting, Boilerplate, &
Pagination
5. Explain the concepts: Page Numbering, Headers and Footers, Footnoting, Table of Contents
and Index Generators
6. Define the concepts: Form Letter Merging, Automatic Spelling Checker and Corrector.
7. Explain how new document is created in Microsoft Word.
8. Discuss the Format menu in Microsoft Word.
9. Describe the process of print in Microsoft Word.
10. Explain the use of formulas in Microsoft Excel.
11. Discuss how data is entered in Microsoft Excel.
12. Describe the basic layout of Microsoft Excel.
13. Describe the concept of desktop publishing.
14. Describe system software with examples.
15. Explain the concept of programming software.
16. Elaborate the meaning of application software.
17. Describe various types of application software.
18. Describe the concept of database.
19. Describe types of databases with examples.
20. Explain the concept of operational databases.
21. Elaborate the concept of analytical databases.
22. Describe concept of data warehouse.
23. Describe the concept of computer languages.
24. Describe the meaning of machine languages.
25. Explain the concept of assembly language.
26. Elaborate the concept of higher language with examples.
27. Describe the concept of graphic programs.
28. Describe the difference between bitmap and vector graphics.
29. Explain the concept of CAD software.
30. Elaborate the concept of 3D modeling software.
31. Discuss the concepts of pixels and bits.
32. Describe the concept of drawing programs.
33. Describe the difference between drawing and painting in software.
34. Explain the concept and purpose of MS Paint software.
35. Elaborate the features of Microsoft Paint.
36. Discuss the history of MS Paint.
37. Describe the concept of computer animation.

38. Describe the difference between 2D and 3D animation software.
39. Explain the importance of animation in industrial application.
40. Elaborate the difference between computer assisted and computer generated graphics.
41. Describe the importance of freeware video editors with examples.
42. Describe the concept of presentation programs.
43. Describe the features of presentation programs.
44. Explain the importance of communication software.
45. Elaborate the concept of online chat.
46. Describe the concept of FTP.
47. Describe the features of online chat and instant messages.
48. Explain the importance of project management software.
49. Elaborate the tasks and activities carried out by project management software.
3.22 REFERENCES
Wikipedia (Microsoft Paint, Computer animation, LIST OF 2D ANIMATION SOFTWARE, List
of 3D animation software, Video editing software, List of video editing software, Presentation
program, Communication software, File Transfer Protocol, Online chat, Instant Messaging, Project
management software, Integrated software)

UNIT 4: INPUT TO COMPUTERS
4.0 BEFORE WE BEGIN

Any data or instruction entered into the computer is known as INPUT. An input device helps you
to communicate with the computer. To enter information and issue commands, you use input devices.
A computer is capable of using several types of input devices so that every user gets a unique
experience. Keyboard, mouse, webcam, scanner, microphone, etc. can be grouped as input devices.
Any data or instruction that is used by a computer is called input". This data or instruction can come
directly from end user or from other devices. For example, while you prepare word documents or
spreadsheets, you use the keyboard to enter text & numbers and use command keys to save / print
documents. You can also perform operations on computer using voice commands. These are all
different methods of providing an input to a computer.
In the unit, you will learn in detail about different types of input devices like keyboard, light pen,
mouse, microphone, webcam, etc. You will also learn about Multimedia, and other critical issues
like’ checking for accuracy’ and data automation.
4.1 UNIT OBJECTIVES
• List the different types of input hardware.

• Discuss Multimedia
• Describe sound input
• Describe voice input
• Describe video input
• Explain data automation
• Explain general devices
• Discuss OCR software
• Explain the idea of ‘checking for accuracy’
4.2 TYPES OF INPUT HARDWARE

Besides the widely used input devices like keyboard & Mice there are other different input
devices that perform various input operations like a scanner scan images / documents. Webcams
capture videos & images.
● Keyboard
● Pointing Devices
○ Mouse
○ Joystick
● Scanning Devices
● Voice Input Devices
● Digital Camera
4.3 KEYBOARD
A keyboard is an essential input device that combines a typewriter keyboard with a numeric
keypad. The special purpose keys and the function keys are used to perform a special tasks like
pressing Control key (CTRL) key in combination with “P” prints a document, or pressing the “F2”
function key opens a window with help content about any issue or topic. Nowadays Multimedia
keyboards are common as they have task specific keys & buttons. For example, volume control ext.
Wireless keyboards are also popular these days, that can be connected to a tablet or a computer via
Bluetooth.
4.3.1 Types of Keyboards
There are different types to different requirements.
Standard Keyboard
Standard Keyboards have alphabetic characters, punctuation symbols, numbers and a variety of
function keys. The 101-key US traditional keyboard and the 104-Key Windows keyboard are some of
the most widely-used standard keyboards for desktop computers. The 102/105 key keyboards are
used across the world. They have a smaller ‘left shift’ key and an added key with additional symbols
between it and the letter to its right (usually Zor Y) .
Laptop-size keyboard
In this type of keyboard, the keys on a laptop are compactly arranged and also have lesser keys so
that finger movement can be minimized. The keyboard on a laptop may not have a numerical
keyboard, and the function keys may be arranged closed at a place unlike the standard, full-size
keyboard.

Gaming and multimedia keyboard
Special keys are provided in some keyboards for accessing music, Weband other popular
programs. Multimedia keyboard is a good example, The use of ctrl+marked on color-coded keys are
used for some software applications and for video editing purposes.
Thumb-sized keyboard
Devices that have restricted workspace such as laptops, cell phones have smaller keyboards.
While the keys of a standard keyboard are large to enable easy operation, in smaller devices, the
numeric keyboard to the right of the alphabetic keyboard is done away with to cut-down in the size of
the keyboard, or the size of the keys are decreased to make the keyboard smaller. However, this does
make it more different to enter text.
The size of the keyboard can be brought down by reducing the number of keys and using a
chording keyer. A chording keyer is a device which permits the user to enter the commands or data
by pressing several keys at one time.
The GKOS keyboard is one such keyboard which has been designed for small wireless devices.
Another way to input data and text is the AlphaGrip. This is a two-handed alternative which is quite
similar to a games controller. One more way to decrease the size of a keyboard is by using smaller
buttons and placing them closer to each other. These keyboards are usually called a ‘thumb board’
and are used in some personal digital assistants. The Palm Treo, BlackBerry and some Ultra-Mobile
PCs such as the OQO are some of the examples of a thumb board.
Numeric Keyboards are keyboards that have only numbers, mathematical symbols like addition,
subtraction, multiplication and division, a decimal point, and several function keys like End, Delete,
etc. These keyboards are frequently used for data entry with smaller keyboard-equipped laptops or
those smaller keyboards that do not have a numeric keypad. Some laptop do not have numeric pad,
therefore these keys are collectively called a numeric pad, numeric keys, or a numeric keypad. A
numeric keypad has the following types of keys.
• Arithmetic operators such as +,-,*,/

• Numeric digits 0-9
• Cursor arrow keys
• Navigation keys such as Home, End, PgUP PgDown etc.
• Num lock button, used to enable or disable the numeric pad.
Non-standard or Special-use types
Chorded keyboard
A keyboard or a chorded keyboard permits entering the characters or commands formed by

pressing several keys together. One of the examples of a keyset or chorded keyboard is playing a
chord on a piano. In this type of keyboard a large number of combinations can be made from a small
number of keys. This helps the user to enter text or commands with one hand and leave the other hand
free to do some other work at the same time. Another advantage of this kind of keyboard is that it can
be built into a device which looks like pocket-sized computer and is too small to contain a normal
sized keyboard. A keyer is a chorded keyboard excluding the board which is designed to be used
while held in the hand.
Virtual Keyboard
A virtual keyboard is a keyboard that can project an image of a full-size keyboard onto a surface.
One example of a virtual keyboard is the I-Tech Virtual Laser Keyboard. The projection unit
comprises of sensors which identifies the key that is being pressed and subsequently relays the signals
to a computer or a personal digital assistant. For Windows a virtual keyboards, which is also known
as the on-screen keyboard is used. The On-screen Keyboard is a type of a keyboard in which an
image of the standard keyboard is seen in the screen and the user can control it by taking the mouse
over the desired latter or symbol, and then clicking on it to enter the latter. The on-screen keyboard is
provided along with Windows for users who find out difficult to use a standard keyboard. Phone is
one such device which uses a multi-touch screen to display a virtual keyboard.
Touch screen keyboard
Touch screens which are used as keyboards are offered by the phone and the OLPC laptop,
OLPC will shortly be launching a second computer which will effectively be two tablet touch screens
hinged together like a book. Its design permits it to be used like a convertible Tablet PC where the
keyboard is like a half-screen, i.e. one side of the book, which turns into a touchscreen virtual
keyboard.
Foldable keyboard
Foldable keyboards are made up of soft plastic or silicone and can be rolled or folded while
travelling. These keyboards are also called flexible. These keyboards can work on uneven surfaces as
well, and are more resistant tp liquids than standard keyboards. These keyboards can also be
connected to portable devices and Smartphone. These models are well-suited for hospital and
laboratory use as they can be disinfected by being immersed in liquids.
Wireless keyboard
A wireless keyboard is a computer keyboard that allows the user to communicate with
computers, tablets, or laptops with the help of radio frequency (RF), infrared (IR) or Bluetooth
technology. It is common for wireless keyboards available these days to be accompanied by a
wireless mouse.
Laser/Infrared keyboard
In recent times, some devices have been created to project a keyboard layout onto any flat by
using a laser or infrared. By this software, the device can detect the key pressed via infrared, and can
artificially produce the tabooing or clicking sound of a physical keyboard.
4.3.2 Keyboard Layout

Alphabetical layout
In the Dvorak Simplified Keyboard layout the keys are arranged in a way that the frequently
used keys are easy to press. This lessens muscle fatigue while typing common English. The
alphabetic numeric and punctuation symbols on keys are arranged differently. The different layout of
the keyboard is required basically due to the fact that different people need easy access to different
symbols. There may be two reasons for different layouts of the keyboards, firstly may be because
they input text in different languages and secondly may be because they need a specific layout for
mathematics, accounting, computer programming or various other fields. The more popular keyboard
layouts (QUERTY based and similar) were made in the era of the mechanical typewriters, which is
why their ergonomics had to be modified to some extent to overcome some of the mechanical
limitations of the typewriter.
Alternative layout of keyboards
Alternative layout such as the Dvorak (Simplified) Keyboard and Cokenmakare Keyboards
were not widely used. Therefore, inventor Christopher Sholes developed the QWERTY layout
keyboard where the latter keys were joined to levers that needed to move freely. This brought
down the possibility of jamming. After computers were introduced, lever jams are no longer an
issue. Yet, QWERTY layout keyboards were used for electronic keyboards due to their popularity.
Another layout of keyboard is called the QWERTZ layout, which is frequently used in Germany
and most of Central Europe. The only difference between QWERTZ and QWERTY is that the letters
Y and Z are switched and the special characters such as brackets are substituted by diacritical
characters.
Some modifications are made to accommodate specific needs to different languages and
keyboards have special keys designed for non-English speaking markers. For example, for typing
Spanish, some characters are shifted in other to accommodate No. Similarly, Keyboards for French
and other European languages can have a special key for the character C and c France, Belgium, and
some of the neighboring countries use the AZERTY layout keyboard. The difference between
QWERTY and AZERTY layout is that the letters A and Z are swapped with Q and W, respectively,
Similarly in countries like Canada and in the French-speaking province of Quebec, keyboards can be
often switched between English and French-language, while both keyboards share the same
QWERTY alphabetic layout.
4.3.3 Key Types

Alphanumeric
The keys like alphabetical numeric and punctuation keys are used in the same fashion as a
typewriter keyboard to enter particular symbols into a word processing program, text editor, data
spreadsheet, or any other program. There are many keys which produce different symbols when the
modifier keys or shift keys are pressed. When the Caps Lock Key or the Shift key is pressed, the
alphabetic characters become uppercase. Similarly, when the Shift key is pressed with the numeric
key the characters become symbols or punctuation marks. When some modifier keys are pressed with
the alphabetical numeric and punctuation keys they can also have some other function.
The Space Bar has descended from the mechanical typewriter like the alphanumeric
characters and is a horizontal bar in the lowermost row which is must wider than other keys. The
chief purpose the space bare is to enter the space between two words while typing. It is
convenient as its size allows the thumbs from either hand to use it easily. When the Space Bar is

used with a modifier key such as the control key, it may have functions such as altering the size
or closing the current windows, half-spacing, or backspacing depending upon the operating
system. In computer games and other applications, a key has numerous uses in apart from its
normal purpose of typing, such as jumping and adding marks to check boxes. The Space Bar is
used for pausing and resuming the playback in certain programs for playback of digital video.
Modifiers
When the two keys- modifier key and the normal key are pressed together they modify the
normal action of the other key. Therefore the modifier keys are special keys that modify the normal
action of another key. For example, in Microsoft Windows in order or close a program in an active
window <Alt>+ <F4> key is used. Unless used with any other key, the modifier keys usually does
nothing. For example, by pressing just <F4> one cannot get any result, unless assigned a specific
function in a particular program.
The keys like the Control Key, Shift key the Alt key are the most widely-used modifier keys. On
the Macintosh and Apple keyboards, the modifier keys are the Option key and Command key,
respectively. The AltGr key is used to access additional symbols for keys, which have three symbols
printed on them. The Meta key is used as a modifier in the MIT computer keyboards, the Windows
key is used for Windows keyboards. Fn key is often used for Compact keyboard layouts. The
accented characters or the diacritic characters are typed by the Dead keys (e.g. the Compose key).
In the word processing applications the Enter key is used to end a paragraph and start a new line.
Therefore the Enter/Return key usually causes a command line, window from or dialog box to operate
its default function which is generally to finish an entry and begin the desired process.
Navigation and typing mode
The navigation keys move the cursor to different positions on the screen. These keys include a
variety of Arrow keys that are programmed to move the cursor in a specified direction page scroll
keys, such as the Page Up and Page Down keys, which scrolls the page up and down. In order to
move the cursor to the beginning of the line where the cursor is located the Home key is used.
Likewise the End key puts the cursor at the end of the line and the Tab Key advances the cursor to the
next tab stop in the tables when drawn in Microsoft Word.
The Insert key is used to overwrite any text. Therefore, the Insert key is mainly used to switch
between normal modes to overtype mode. The Delete key is used to delete or remove the selected
characters. In many notebook computer keyboards the Delete key serves the same purpose as a
Backspace key. Therefore, the same key contains Delete and Backspace printed on it. The preceding
character is deleted by the Backspace key.
Depending on the selected settings, the Lock keys locks part of a keyboard. The keys such as
Scroll lock, Num Lock and Caps Lock keys are the Lock Keys .
System commands
In earlier computers, SysRq was used as a panic button to recover from crashes.

The point Screen command was used to capture the entire screen and send it to the printer for
printing the page, but presently it puts a screenshot in the clipboard or pesters it in the document. The
SysRq/print screen commands often share the same key. The Break key can be used by the software
in several different ways. It is used to switch between multiple login sessions, to terminate a program,
or to interrupt a modern connection.
In programming mostly in old DOS style BASIC, Pascal and C, Break key along with the
conjunction of Ctrl key is used to stop the execution of any program. In addition to this, in many
DOS-based programs or Linux and its variants, this combination, i.e. the same as Ctrl+C is used for
the same function. On modern keyboards, the Break key is usually labeled as Pause/Break. In most
Windows environments, the Windows Key +Pluse Key bring up the system properties. The Escape
key is used to initiate an escape sequence, which is often abbreviated Esc. Nowadays in many web
browsers a common application of the Esc Key is a shortcut Key for the Stop button.
On the Windows oriented computer keyboards the Menu key or Application key is found which
is usually used to launch a context menu with the keyboard rather than using the right button of the
mouse. The key is shown a small icon depicting a cursor hovering above a menu.
Miscellaneous
Most of the computer keyboards have a numeric keypad to the right of the alphabetic keyboard.
This contains the numbers, the basic mathematical symbols like the addition, subtraction, etc. and few
other function keys. In many Japanese or Korean keyboards, there may be Language input keys.
Some of the Keyboards have power management keys such as Power key, sleep key and Wake key,
etc. They also have the internet keys to access a web browser or e-mail and/or the multimedia keys
such as volume controls.
CHECK YOUR PROGRESS
Describe the various types of input devices.
Discuss the features of keyboard.
Explain the types of keyboard.
Elaborate the layout of keyboards.
4.4 POINTING DEVICES

A pointing device is an input interface that allows a user to input data to a computer. While the
most commonly used pointing device is the mouse, many more devices have also been developed.

4.4.1 Mouse
The mouse becomes a popular computer tool after Apple Computer made it an integral part of
the Apple Macintosh. It was named so because of its small size and color as a toy mouse. It is a small
device that a computer user pushes across a back surface in order to position the cursor on the display
screen and to select one or more actions related to that position. The mouse has now become an
integral part of the Graphical User Interface (GUT) of any personal computer.
The optical mouse is a computer mouse first introduced by Microsoft on April 19, 1999 that
utilizes light-emitting diodes (LED) or laser to help track movement. These mouse are identified by
examining the bottom of the mouse. As seen in the picture the optical-mechanical mouse has a ball,
and the optical mouse has a light emitting from the bottom.
Drawbacks of some optical mouse include working properly in rooms with bright lights and on
some surfaces such as a glass table. However, in comparison to optical-mechanical mouse, optical
mouse are a much better solution.
There are three or more buttons on the top of the casing, and a cable that connects the mouse to
the computer an optical mouse also has a tiny low-resolution camera that takes a thousand or more
pictures every second. In the camera, the complementary metal-oxide semiconductor (CMOS) sensor
sends a signal to a Digital Signal Processor (DSP). The DSP can analyze each picture for pattern and
light changes and then based off those changes moves the mouse cursor on your screen. An user
readjusts the position by moving the mouse after seeing the cursor’s present position.
Most mouse have two buttons and a scroll wheel on top of which the left one is used frequently.
In the Windows operating systems, when the button is clicked once by the user select, indication is
shown which provides the user with feedback that a particular position has been selected for further
action. The next click on a selected position or a double click on a selected position starts a particular
action in the selected option for example, in Windows operating systems. When it is double clicked
on a particular program it causes the program to be started related with that object.
The second button on the mouse is not used that frequently as that of the right button. For
example, while viewing a web page, a click on an image gives a popup menu that, among other
things, allows saving the image on the hard disk.Nearly all mouse now have an integrated input
primarily intended for scrolling on top, usually a single-axis digital wheel or rocker switch which
can also be depressed to act as a third button. Though less common, many mouse instead have
two-axis inputs such as a tilt able wheel, trackball, or touchpad.
Cordless or wireless mouse transmit data via infrared radiation (see IrDA) or radio (including
Bluetooth and Wi-Fi). The receiver is connected to the computer through a serial or USB port, or can
be built in (as is sometimes the case with Bluetooth and Wi-Fi). Modern non-Bluetooth and non-Wi-
Fi wireless mouse use USB receivers. Some of these can be stored inside the mouse for safe transport
while not in use, while other, newer mouse use newer "nano" receivers, designed to be small enough
to remain plugged into a laptop during transport, while still being large enough to easily remove.
The design of a mouse is continuously getting upgraded. Notebook computers or the laptops
have a built-in mouse device that facilitates the control of the cursor by the action of rolling the finger
over a built in trackball. IBM’s Scroll Point mouse is a mouse that adds a small stick between two
mouse buttons that lets scroll a web page or other content up or down and right or left. Graphic
designers and CAD applicators can use a stylus and an especially sensitive pad to draw as well as
move the cursor. As one of the latest screen positioning innovations, now we also have video cameras
which can track the user’s eye movement and place the cursor accordingly.
4.4.2 Trackball
Trackball are especially appropriate for portable computers and look like a mouse turned upside
down. It is a movable ball, on top of a stationary device, which is rotated with the fingers or palm of
the hand.
4.4.3 Touchpad
A touchpad is a pointing device featuring a tactile sensor a specialized surface that can translate
the motion and position of a user's fingers to a relative position on the operating system that is
outputted to the screen.
Touchpad are a common feature of laptop computers, and are also used as a substitute for a
mouse where desk space is scarce. Wireless touchpad are also available as detached accessories.
4.4.4 Light Pens

A light pen is a lightweight, sensitive stylus, or a pen-like device, which is connected by a wire
to the computer terminal. The user can use this pen by bringing it to the desired point on the display
screen and pressing the pen button, which can identity that screen location to the computer.
4.4.5 Touch Screens

A touch screen is a video display screen that has been sensitized to receive input through the
touch of a finger.
4.4.6 Digitizers and Graphic Tablet

A graphics tablet is also known as a digitizing tablet. A graphics pad or drawing tablet is a
computer input device that allows one to hand-draw images and graphics in the same way as one
can draw images with a pencil and paper. These tablets are used to capture data or handwritten
signatures.
In a graphics tablet (also called as a pen pad or digitizer) the image usually does not appear on the
tablet itself and it is shown on the computer monitor instead. It also composes of a flat surface upon
which the user can draw an image using an attached stylus, which is a pen-like drawing apparatus.
However, some tablets also function as a secondary computer screen that one can interacts with
directly by using a stylus.
CHECK YOUR PROGRESS

Describe the various types of pointing devices.
Discuss the features of mouse.
Explain the working of light pen, touch screens, touch pad and trackballs.
Elaborate the functioning and features of graphic tablet.
4.5 GAME DEVICES

Game devices are special game controllers that are specialized computer input devices. They are
designed for gaming purposes, and are used for playing games. They do not work well with keyboard
controls, the mouse, or with the combination of two. The different kinds of game controllers like
flight yokes, joysticks, gamepads, virtual pedals, etc. were invented to enhance the gaming and/or
simulation experience.
Described below are the following basic categories of computer gaming devices;
Nostromo n30 game mouse
The n30 Game Mouse transforms digital information into Physical sensations which the Touch
Sense technology from Immersion does. They can give a life like feel to events such as the gun blasts,
the motorcycle's impact on hitting the ground, or a car hitting a wall. N30 is especially designed as a
precision gaming tool that can help and improve a gamer’s performance. This adds something extra to
the desktop, creating multiple vibrating sensations white navigating desktop levels and menus,
documents and web pages.
Nostromo n50 Speedpad
This can be called a combination keyboard and a game pad. The ten keys on the n50 can be
accessed and configured easily and intuitively and act as keys on a keyboard. It is an innovative,
multipurpose tool that will lead the gaming experience to a whole new level. The n50 also has an
eight-way directional pad, which is much more like a d-pad on a standard game pad. The n50
Speed Pad is great for any game that normally uses a keyboard. It is an adjustable ergonomic
gaming device with 56 programmable functions.
Joysticks
With the use of joysticks games such as the battle games, flight simulators, and other games
necessitating quick, reflexive movements are greatly enhanced. Joysticks come in varying shapes
and sizes. There are special models developed to suit the needs of special kinds of games. For
examples, some joysticks developed for flying related games simulate the controller in the
cockpit of an airplane. It comes in the form of a simple hand grip with a few buttons to a

contoured command center for a wide range of virtual weapons.
Game Pads
Game pads were developed to control the movement of any character on the screen, such as
in martial arts simulation. The characters are moved from one place to another or different parts
of their bodies are moved with the help of a game pad. Generally the game pad has a directional
pad which is often called the D-pad. It has four action buttons which is usually labeled A-D and
two fire buttons located on the front edge of the pad. The game pad is held in such a way that the
thumbs can operate the D-Pad and the action buttons and the fire buttons are operated by the index
fingers.
Steering wheels
Steering wheels are used for games which entail driving It comprises of a steering wheel, an
accelerator and a brake. Some of the steering wheel controllers allow manual (i.e. gear-to-gear)
shifting , while others only have high, low or forward reverse options. To make driving more realistic
in computers, a whole range of racing wheels have been developed. Since the steering is developed
with force feedback, you can feel the actual resistance some particular types of steering have . For
example, one can feel the difference between riding a motorcycle and flying a helicopter, or driving a
car or tank.
Yokes
The more advanced version of the joysticks is the Yokes which are used primarily for flight
simulations. Unlike the simple joystick, yokes allow two-handed operations and can be used to
maneuver a game’s aircraft in all three dimensions.
Pedals
Pedals simulate a forward/backward slide motion like one feels while actually flying. The pivot
movement of each pedals works as a differential braking. I.e. toe brakes as well as gas and control
brake for auto racing simulators. A high level of flight control can be experienced if the three axes of
pedals are added to the five axes Flight Sim Yoke.
Wireless PC glasses and transmitter
With the Wireless PC Glasses and Transmitter one can play multi-player games. Watch 3D
movies, and also watch a game in X3D.
Video game consoles
A video game console is an interactive entertainment computer. It has many other functions
which are used to distinguish a machine designed for playing video games from a personal computer.
CHECK YOUR PROGRESS

Describe the various types of game devices.
Discuss the features of joystick.
Explain the function of steering wheel in gaming.
Elaborate the operation of yoke in games.
4.6 POINT-OF-SALE (POS) TERMINAL

A point –of-sale (POS) terminal is basically the computerized replacement of a cash register.
Generally, a POS terminal has, as its core, a personal computer which is provided with application
specific programs and 1/0 devices for the particular environment in which it serves. The POS system
can include other functions like the ability to record and track customer orders, process credit and
debit cards, connect to other systems in a network, and manage inventory. It can do a lot more than
the cash registers which were used before. The POS system in a restaurant may have all menu items
stored in a database that can be queried for information in a number of ways. A point-of-sale service
such as a service desk, including restaurants, lodging, entertainment and museums use the POS
terminals.
POS terminals are becoming increasingly popular as it can enable inventory tracking across
geographically- dispersed locations and are also web-enabled, which makes remote training and
operation simpler.
4.7 WHAT IS MULTIMEDIA?

The word ‘multimedia’ was first used in 1956 when Andy Warhol organized a series of events
called ‘the Exploding Plastic Inevitable’. This term was used to describe a combination of media
including video, still images, audio and text that is delivered to the end users (most of the time
electronically) and can be interacted with.
Multimedia is made of two terms ‘multi’ which means many and ‘media’ which refers to
communication/transfer medium. Multimedia is a mix of text, graphic art, sound, animation and video
elements presented by your computer or any other electronic means. A computer’s encyclopedia
containing images, audio and video effects along with the content is a simple example of a
multimedia application. Working on multimedia is not as easy as definition implies. You would need
to understand the importance of each individual element and also have knowledge about the usage of
multimedia tools and technologies, to weave the elements of multimedia in a meaningful manner.

Human interactivity forms the core of any multimedia application. This includes response to the
commands (clicking on buttons, icons, menu items etc) dictated by the end-user. This type of
multimedia where a user controls what and when the elements are to be delivered is referred to as
interactive multimedia. When users are given navigational control so that they navigate from one
element to another in a non-linear fashion, interactive multimedia becomes ‘hypermedia’. You know
that the most succes sful network information system is the World Wide Web (WWW). One reason
for its popularity among all types of users is the ease with which one can use its interface. The
concept of hypertext and hypermedia has gained familiarity after the introduction of the World Wide
Web.
Importance of Multimedia
Multimedia is characterized by an audio-visual interface, which provides an excellent medium for

user interactivity.
It improves information retention (According to a research conducted by computer technology,

people only retain 20 per cent of what they see and 30 per cent of what they hear. But they remember
50 per cent of what they see and hear, and as much as 80 per cent of what they see, hear, and do
simultaneously).
Computer games are the most common applications of multimedia. Other widely used
applications include educational CDs (Computer Based Training-CBT) and promotional information
(new products, marketing schemes, etc.).
Multimedia has also become an integral part of the Internet. Web pages can contain animated
images, videos and sound effects, in addition to text, to make them more appealing and interactive.
4.7.1 Multimedia Tools

Authoring tools
The key to successful multimedia production is a seamless integration of multimedia elements

for graphic design, content management, production and packaging. The whole process of developing
a multimedia package is called authoring. An authoring system is a collection of software tools that
help in various aspects of multimedia production. Multimedia elements are woven together using
authoring tools. These tools are designed for managing individual multimedia elements and also for
providing user interaction. Multimedia authoring software can be used to make:
• Interactive training
• Presentation
• Games
• Animations
• Simulations, prototypes and technical visualization
• Video Productions
• Interactive kiosk applications

CHECK YOUR PROGRESS
Describe the importance of POS terminal.
Discuss the features of Point of Sale (POS) terminals.
Explain the importance of multimedia.
Elaborate the various multimedia tools.
Steps in multimedia production
Media capture: Multimedia authoring systems streamline data capture by providing

interfaces to a range of image and data capture devices.
Media conversion: Images, audio clips, animation, sequences and video clips exist in a
variety of formats. A well-equipped multimedia authoring system will include a set of
utilities for converting many of the commonly used formats.
Media editing: After data has been captured and converted to the native format of the
authoring system, it may need some polishing before it is suitable for presentation. ‘Noise’,
for instance, c an be removed from audio clips; images can be touched up, etc. Multimedia
authoring systems provide media-specific editors for these operations.
Media composition: The core of a multimedia authoring system includes a tool for
combining media and specifying their spatial (one image being juxtaposed or placed side-by-
side within a second) and temporal (when an audio track in added to a visual sequence)
relationships.
4.7.2 Elements of Multimedia

Text
The most widely used form of communication in multimedia software is Text, which
comprises words and symbols. It is one of the popularly used media for delivering detailed
and precise information. The core structure to a package is provided by Text Words are vital
elements of multimedia that can appear in the titles, menus, navigation aids and in the
content of a multimedia application or project. It is most essential to use words that have the
most precise and powerful meanings to express what you need to convey.
While comparing with other multimedia elements text is not so user-friendly. For
example, it tires the eyes if one reads from the screen rather than its printed version.
Designing with text
From a design perspective, the choice of font size, style and other text attributes should
be related both to the complexity of the message as well as to its venue.
The following are some useful tips designing the text in your multimedia application.
• Use legible fonts that can be easily read.

• Vary the font size and style according to the importance of your message.
AAA AAAA
• Indent your paragraphs wherever required.
• Explore the effects of different colors and shadows to add depth to your application.
• Use menus for easy navigation and meaningful words for menu items.
• Use buttons, icons or symbols for user interaction.
• You can also use stylish fonts for displaying attention-grabbing results.
AAAAAAA
Hyperlinks
Hypertext is the arrangement of data units into connected associations which a user can choose
to make. One such association is a hyperlink. When a user clicks on such a link, more information on
the particular topic is displayed. It, therefore, provides the user an option of reading as much
information as required. Hyperlinks can contain cross-linking of words not only to words but also to
images, videos or sound files. Hyperlinks are used for non-linear navigation which is not an option
available in a sequentially organized book.
Graphics
Pictures/graphics help in accentuating the overall look of a multimedia package. Pictures express
more than normal text and are generally considered as the most important element of a multimedia
application.
It is often noticed that a web page containing numerous images takes longer to download than a
simple text-based web page. Image files are therefore compressed to save memory and disk space of
your computer. Examples of compressed image file formats include GIF (Graphics Interchange
Format) , JPEG( joint Photographic Experts Group) and PNG (Portable Network Graphics) .

The following are some of the ways by which you can create pictures.You can use drawing tools
like MS Paint to create simple pictures.MS Paint allows creating or assembling pictures by drawing
straight, wavy or curved lines, using shapes like squares, circles and polygons, or simply by freehand
drawing.
You can insert images from the CLIPART GALLERY. A Clipart collection typically contains a
series of images for different categories. Clip art is available through CD-ROMs or from the Internet.
You can use scanner or digital camera to capture original pictures in digitized form. You can also
scan images, created using traditional methods like watercolors, crayons, etc.
Animation
Animation gives visual impact to your multimedia application. In simple terms, it can be defined
as an entity moving across the screen. This entity could be a text object or an image. An animation
consists of a series of rapidly changing objects, which when blended together gives an illusion of
movement. The speed with which each object is replaced by the next one is so rapid that the eye
perceives this as motion.
Consider, for example, a person is walking. The position of the human legs is changing in such a
way that it seems that person is walking.
Animation tools
MS PowerPoint is a tool used for creating primitive animations. Visual effects like wipes
dissolves, fades and zooms can be added to any object. You can, for example, make a text to fly from
top or left. Such effects are available with almost all authoring packages. You can create complex
animations using tools like Director, 3D Studio, Max, CompuServe and Shockwave. Such animations
can be ported across platforms and applications by making use of making use of suitable translators.
The following are some useful tips for adding animation in your multimedia application.
• Before you create an animation, organize its execution into a series of logical steps. First
choose the objects steps. First choose the objects in your presentation that you wish to
animate, and then decide upon the sequence of animation. In case of complicated
presentations, writing a detailed script of the list of activities will prove useful.
• You can animate one or all objects of an application. As mentioned earlier, applications
intended for the web should not contain too many animations as it would affect the download
time.
• Add user interactivity wherever essential to the application.
• You can combine animation with lively sounds for grabbing the user’s attention.
Sound
Sound sets a rhythm or a mood in a package. Speech gives an effect of a language

(pronunciation). Proper usage of sound can make all the difference between an ordinary multimedia
presentation and a professional one.
Sound types

Musical Instrument Digital Interface (MIDI) is a communication standard which was developed
in early 1980s. It found application in electronic musical instruments and computers. A MIDI file
consists of a list of commands that represent the recordings of musical actions. When these
commands are sent to a MIDI playback device, a sound is produced. The main disadvantage of MIDI
data is that it is not digitized. In contrast, Digital Audio is a recording that depends on the capabilities
of your sound system. Digital audio data are the actual representations of sound data and are stored in
the form of thousands of individual numbers known as Samples. Digital sound is used for music CDs.
Creating sound
Sound can recorded using a microphone or a synthesizer. It can also be recorded on media such
as tape and cassette player and then be digitized using audio digitizing software. Therefore, sound
may be digitized from any source-natural or pre-recorded. Digitized sounds are stored as wave
(WAV) files (Windows platform). These can then be played using Windows Media Player. The
following are some useful tips for adding sounds to your multimedia application.
A distorted recording sounds terrible, so before a sound file is added it must be tested for clarity.
If required, it must be edited using audio-editing must be tested for clarity. If required, it must be
edited using audio-editing tools like Wave Studio Sound Edit. 16-2, it may be worth noting that
higher the sound quality, larger would be the file size.
Decide upon the kind of sound you need (such as background music, special sound effects or
spoken dialogue.)
Test the sound to ensure they are synchronized properly with image and or animations.
Video
Digital video is the most engaging of multimedia venues and is a powerful tool for bringing users
close to the real world.
PAL (Phase Alteration Line), NTSE (national Television Standards Committee) are the
commonly used broadcast and video standards across the globe.
Earlier, television was based on analog technology and fixed international standards for the
broadcast and display of images. Computer video, on the other hand, is based on digital technology
and other standards for displaying images. Digital Video is produced using analog video as a base. A
special hardware called Video, Capture Card is required for converting an analog video into a digital
video.
Video data is also compressed using compressed using different compression techniques. MPEG
(Motion Pictures Expert Group), JPEG (joint Photographic Experts Group), P* 64, real video are
examples of commonly used compressed video format.
The following are some useful tips for adding video clips to your multimedia application:
• Video clippings which are not appropriately designed can degrade your presentation rather
than add value to it. Carefully planned, well-executed clips can make a dramatic difference in
a multimedia presentation.
• Titles used in video clips should be plain enough to be easily read.
• Avoid marking busy title screens, use more screen if required.
• Any multimedia element that is added to an application intended for the Web should be
compressed to support quick and easy download.
CHECK YOUR PROGRESS
Describe the steps in multimedia production.
Discuss the elements of multimedia.
Explain the various ways to design texts in multimedia.
Elaborate the importance of graphics and animation in multimedia.
Discuss the various types of sound used in multimedia.
Explain how video is used in multimedia.
4.8 SOUND INPUT

Sound input devices allow a user to send audio signals to a computer for processing, recording, or
executing commands. Devices such as microphones allow users to speak to the computer in order to
record a voice message or navigate software. It is an effective sound input device as it can capture
sounds from the air resulting in good sound effects or voices.
Other types of audio input devices are made to interface a computer with a CD audio source,
digital audio, or MIDI instrument such as a synthesizer.
To get good quality sound effects and music, one can have the best results by using a musical
instrument that is connected directly to the computer. Recording sounds for computers need special
equipment. Different software can combine music which is recorded at different times. In fact, one
can build a music group all by oneself by singing and playing all the parts!
4.9 VOICE INPUT

Voice input systems are widely available and one must be careful to get the right system to suit
one’s specific requirements. In order to get a good voice input system one must decide whether it will
fulfill one’s requirements and solve the purpose.

There are various types of voice input and these have been discussed as the following:
Data entry: This entails transferring data into the computer in the form of verbal communication.
However, one needs to be very careful about one’s pronunciation!
Command and control: This entails commanding the computer like saying ‘Save file’. Care
must be taken as the dictionary o f understood words does not include some of the more forceful
ones.
Speaker recognition: The computer must recognize a particular voice. It enhances the security
by marking it mandatory to speak a special phrase.
Speech to text: Translating might work some times, i.e. spoken words directly get typed would
suit some authors just fine. However, there may be some words which are difficult to translate.
4.9.1 Changing Voice to Data

The following steps are used to convent voice to data.
• DSP or digital signal processing is a device that converts voice sound waves to digital form.
• The digitized voice input is compared to stored templates.
• Grammar rules checked to figure out words.
• Unrecognized words are presented for the user to identify.
4.9.2 Types of Voice Recognition Systems

Most companies and even banks are now using speech recognition systems in the telephones
systems, as it serves as a simple way to enhance their security processes. The different types of voice
recognition systems have been discussed as follows:
Speaker-dependent system: This might take hours of taking the dictionary into the computer, to
be optimistic. The software must be trained to recognize each word by each individual user.
Speaker-independent systems: It uses templates but a strong accent world defeat the system,
however, the software recognizes words from most speakers with no training.
Discrete speech recognition: For the computer total when a word stops the speaker must pause
between words.
Continuous speech recognition: The normal conversational flow must be used by the system.
Natural language: The speaker could question the computer, ‘How soon can we ship a dozen of
product #25 in blue to Nashville?’ and get an answer!
CHECK YOUR PROGRESS

Describe the how sound input is used in computers.
Discuss voice commands can be used in computers.
Explain the various ways to change voice to data.
Elaborate the types of voice recognition systems.
4.10 VIDEO INPUT

Video input devices are used to feed digitized images or videos into the computer. The
information can be stored in a multitude of formats depending on the user’s requirement.
There are various devices that can be used for video input. These are:
• A digital camera is one of the video input devices. It takes still photos and can record the
pictures on computer disks or memory clips. The information contained can be uploaded to a
computer for viewing.
• A video camera or recorder (VCR) is not a digital device, but can still give good results with
the right software. It can record data that can be uploaded to the computer with the right
hardware. Both the video input devices take huge amounts of storage and the photos make for
very large files.
• A webcam or a web camera is a tiny video camera designed especially to be placed on the
computer, to record data. It feeds pictures directly to the computer and no tape or film is
required to be developed. However, it requires a cable to connect the camera to the computer.
• A webcam can be used for many purposes. It can be used for video conferencing over the
Internet. It can also take digital pictures and make movies of family, pets, and any ongoing
event.
4.11 DATA AUTOMATION

Data automation is a process in which data can be inserted into the computer system by avoiding
any man-made errors. Different situations require different methods and equipment for entering data.
The main goal of data automation is to avoid mistakes in entering a data into the system by making
the initial entering of the data as automatic as possible.
The second goal of data automation is to avoid re-entering the same data a number of times to
perform different tasks with it. For example, the old style cash register would add up the purchase and
then calculate the tax. To do this, the clerk would have to enter all the data manually, which is a
tedious and time consuming task. Later, the numbers of the store copy and the cash register tapes
would have to be added up manually, or entered into a computer program leading to another data

entry task. A third data entry task needs to be carried out for updating the inventory.
The human errors possible at each step of data entry are now avoided with modern data
automation. By using bar codes on each item in the store, the computer check-out register along with
a bar code scanner, can easily calculate the number of sales. It can also transfer the information
directly into the computer that does the store bookkeeping and also adjust the inventory records by
deducting the number of items sold. In addition, a new feature available with computerized cash
registers enables the printing of a receipt that states the name of the item bought as well as the price.
CHECK YOUR PROGRESS
Describe the how video input is used in computers.
Discuss various video devices which can be used in computers.
Explain the concepts of data automation.
Elaborate roles of data automation.
4.12 GENERAL DEVICES

Scanner
This is a device which converts text or even a drawing or picture into recognizable form by using
a form of optical recognition. The various types of scanners are:
Flatbed: A flatbed scanner scans one sheet at a time and looks like a table top copy machine.
Sheetfed scanner: A sheetfed scanner is motorized rollers feed the sheet across the scanning
head. The paper has to be fed up just like using fax machine.
Handheld scanner: A handheld scanner is a least expensive and least reliable but portable.
Bar-code scanner
The bar code scanner is hand-held or fixed devices that can read the bar codes on packages.
Credit card reader
By using this device one can swipe the credit card through the device, which reads the magnetic
numbers in the magnetic strip on the card.

Special types of characters read with special devices
Bar codes
A vertical zebra-striped mark can be seen in most manufactured retail products and are read by
bar-code readers and bar code reader is photoelectric scanners that translate the bar-code symbols into
digital forms.
Optical marks
Optical mark reader is used in test scoring. It is a special machine that reads the marks.
Magnetic-ink Character Recognition
Magnetic ink Character Recognition (MCR) reads strange looking numbers printed at the bottom
of checks.
Magnetic strip
A magnetic strip is the back of a credit card and has a magnetic strip that contains magnetically
encoded numbers. For example, a credit card reader can read the numbers and transmit them to a
computer to verify if the card is valid.
Optical characters
Optical coding systems are those in which there are coding systems that use letters or special
characters that are especially shaped to be easy for machines to read.
4.13 OPTICAL CHARACTER RECOGNITION SOFTWARE

By using the Optical Character Recognition Software, one can scan images and convert the
characters in the image into computer characters. One also can edit documents with the help of a
word processor, but it is a very complicated procedure. If the original print is not very precise and
clean, the likelihood of errors is quite high, hence, documents should be carefully rechecked to rule
out the possibility of wrong conversions. However, these programs are constantly being upgraded.
CHECK YOUR PROGRESS
Describe the importance of barcode readers.
Discuss the difference between optical character recognition and magnetic ink character

recognition (MICR).
Explain the concepts of magnetic strip reading.
Elaborate the functioning of optical mark reading (OMR) .
4.14 SUMMARY
All input can be any data or instructions that you feed to the system and which is retained in its
memory. These are the devices by which data and program are provided in such a way that the
computer can understand.
A keyboard is one of the input devices, which is designed similar to a typewriter keyboard. An
array of keys on the keyboard functions as mechanical levers or electronic switches.
Standard keyboards have alphabetic characters; punctuation symbols numbers and a variety of
function keys.
Most commonly used standard keyboards for desktop computers are 101 key. The US traditional
keyboards, or the 104-key, Windows keyboards.
Keys on a laptop are compactly arranged and also have lesser keys so that there are minimal
finger movements.
Special keys are provided in some keyboards for accessing music, webs and other popular
programs.
Devices that have limited workspace such as laptop PDAs and cell phones have been introduced
with smaller keyboards. Numeric keyboards are those keyboards that contain only numbers
mathematical symbols (like addition, subtraction, multiplication and division) a decimal point, and
several function keys (like end Delete, ) etc.
Touch screen can be used as keyboards (e.g. iPhone OLPC laptop, etc. Foldable keyboards are
those keyboards which are made up of soft plastic or silicone and can be rolled or folded while
travelling.
A pointing device is an input interface that allows a user to input data to a computer. Examples of
pointing devices are mouse, trackball, glide pads, light pens etc.
A point of-sale (POS) terminal is basically the computerized replacement of a cash register.
Multimedia is a term used to describe a combination of media including video, still images,
audio and text that is delivered to the end users (most of the time electronically) and can be interacted
with. Sound input devices allow a user to send audio signals to a computer for processing, recording,
or executing commands.
Video input devices are used to feed digitized images or videos into the computer. The
information can be stored in a multitude of formats depending on the user’s requirement.
Data automation is a process in which data can be inserted into the computer system by avoiding
any man-made errors.
By using the optical character recognition system software, one can scan images and convert the
characters in the image into computer characters.
4.15 END QUESTIONS

1. Describe the various types of pointing devices.
2. Discuss the features of mouse.
3. Explain the working of light pen, touch screens, touch pad and trackballs.
4. Elaborate the functioning and features of graphic tablet.
5. Describe the various types of input devices.
6. Discuss the features of keyboard.
7. Explain the types of keyboard.
8. Elaborate the layout of keyboards.
9. Describe the various types of game devices.
10. Discuss the features of joystick.
11. Explain the function of steering wheel in gaming.
12. Elaborate the operation of yoke in games.
13. Describe the importance of POS terminal.
14. Discuss the features of Point of Sale (POS) terminals.
15. Explain the importance of multimedia.
16. Elaborate the various multimedia tools.
17. Describe the steps in multimedia production.
18. Discuss the elements of multimedia.
19. Explain the various ways to design texts in multimedia.
20. Elaborate the importance of graphics and animation in multimedia.
21. Discuss the various types of sound used in multimedia.
22. Explain how video is used in multimedia.
23. Describe the how sound input is used in computers.
24. Discuss voice commands can be used in computers.
25. Explain the various ways to change voice to data.
26. Elaborate the types of voice recognition systems.
27. Describe the how video input is used in computers.
28. Discuss various video devices which can be used in computers.
29. Explain the concepts of data automation.
30. Elaborate roles of data automation.
31. Describe the importance of barcode readers.
32. Discuss the difference between optical character recognition and magnetic ink character
recognition (MICR).

33. Explain the concepts of magnetic strip reading.
34. Elaborate the functioning of optical mark reading (OMR).

UNIT 5 DATA PROCESSING
5.0 BEFORE WE BEGIN

In this Unit we will learn the concept of Data Processing. The most important or basic function
which a computer does is processing the information or data. We had already seen that the CPU
consists of Arithmetic and Logic Unit (ALU) and control. What the CPU does is process, manipulate
or operate on data. It may perform such arithmetic operation like addition and subtraction, logic
operation such as AND, OR, NOT operations, shift the pattern of bits like shift left or shift right. The
CPU also does such memory operations like storing and retrieve data from memory (register or
RAM). The control part of the CPU is concerned about which pathways to open at what times so that
the information flows as per expected manner.
We will see the basics of data processing in this Unit.
5.1 UNIT OBJECTIVES

• Explain the method of data processing.

• Elaborate digital data and digital codes.
• Describe physical components of a computer system.
• Discuss microprocessors and other memory devices
• Provide a brief description of power connections.
5.2 WHAT IS PROCESSING?

Processing means to operate upon something. For example, when you add two numbers and find
its answer you have operated upon the two numbers and obtained a new number. Similarly in a
spreadsheet (like Microsoft Excel) you may arrange the list of guests by alphabetic order. This is
another example of processing of the information.
Processing may be as simple as comparing two numbers and finding which one is less. In our
daily life we see people’s faces and compare their images with those in our earlier experience to
‘recognise’ a friend or relative. If an old friend has removed his beard, you don’t recognise him as his
image does not match with your database of experience. Comparing faces may be natural to us but it
is a very elaborate process for a computer. You have to run an algorithm or method to process face
recognition. Nowadays many computers can process information like reading thumb or retina patterns
to recognise a person.
5.3 PROCESSING DIGITAL DATA

We know that the modern computers are digital. This means that all types of information is as a

thread of zeros or ones, of varying lengths.
lengths All numbers are represented
sented as 0’s and 1’s. For example,
1010 is equal to ten of our decimal.
Fig 5.01 Processing Digital Data
In the example of our Figure 5.1 the On represents a 1 and “off” represents the 0, and the pattern
is read from left to right as On-off-on
on-off-on-on-off-off
off which is 10101100. What does this mean if it
represents a number?
To find out what that number is, we write from left to right powers of 2. Begin with 1 (=20) at
leftmost, then 2 (=21), 4 (=22),8 (=23), 16 (=24), 32 (=25),64 (=26),128 (=27).
128 64 32 16 8 4 2 1
Now, write the given pattern 10101100 so that each character (0 or 1) will fall below the
number written by us, like this:
128 64 32 16 8 4 2 1
1 0 1 0 1 1 0 0
Add the numbers on the top row for which the number below is 1: 128+32+8+4, you get 172.
This is how a computer understands our number 172. This representation is called binary number.
Each of the 0 and 1 is called a bit (short form of Binary digIT). Thus, 1010 is a four bit number as
there are four 0’s or 1’s. 10101100 is a 8 bit number.
A string
ring of 4 bits is called a nibble and a string of 8 bits is called a byte. Thus 10101100 is a
string of one byte length.
If you have a single bit system, it can deal with only two (21) possibilities or symbols to represent
(like 0/1, Yes/No, Success/Failure,re, Head/Tail). A 2-bit
2 system will be able to use 4 (22) symbols (00,
01, 10, 11). A four bit system has capacity to deal with 16 (24) symbols, 8 bit system can handle 256
(28) symbols, 10 bit system can handle around a thousand states (1024 (210) to be exact).
xact). In general, a
N bit sytem can handle (2N) symbol. Remember this. This piece of information will be used again and
again in this unit.
CHECK YOUR PROGRESS

Describe the concept of processing in a computer system.
Discuss the how computer understands the data in binary numbers.
Explain how a binary number can be converted into decimal number which we use in our daily
life.
Explain how many symbols a binary (computer) system with 5bits can handle.
5.4 DIGITAL CODES

We have seen how computer understands a number. In order for it to understand text charecters (like
alphabets a to z (lowercase), A to Z (uppercase), symbols (like !@#$%^&*()_+=-/><”;][~`), we
assign binary strings (of 0’s and 1’s, which is called a ‘bit’) to them in a unique way so that one string
corresponds to one character only. We call them code sets.
There are three common code sets, which are as follows:
Unicode (for recent browsers and Windows NT), EBCDIC (for IBM System 390 mainframes),
ASCII (used in DOS/Windows-based computers and UNIZ)
In the ASCII Code set, 7 bits per character are used: thus admitting 128 unique characters. This is
sufficient for alphabets in upper case and lower case, the symbols on a regular English typewriter, and
some combinations set aside for internal use. A lengthy ASCII code set utilizes 8 bits per character
which brings another 128 possible characters. This large code set also facilitates foreign languages
symbols and several graphical symbols.
ASCII has been supplanted by other coding systems in advanced computing. It is, however, still
utilized for shifting plain text data among different programs or computers that use different coding
strategies.
5.4.1 Unicode
Unicode is a computing industry standard for the consistent encoding, representation, and handling of
text expressed in most of the world's writing systems. The latest version contains a repertoire of
136,755 characters covering 139 modern and historic scripts, as well as multiple symbol sets. The
Unicode Standard is maintained in conjunction with ISO/IEC 10646, and both are code-for-code
identical.
The Unicode Standard consists of a set of code charts for visual reference, an encoding method and
set of standard character encodings, a set of reference data files, and a number of related items, such
as character properties, rules for normalization, decomposition, collation, rendering, and bidirectional
display order (for the correct display of text containing both right-to-left scripts, such as Arabic and
Hebrew, and left-to-right scripts). As of June 2017, the most recent version is Unicode 10.0. The

standard is maintained by the Unicode Consortium.
Unicode's success at unifying character sets has led to its widespread and predominant use in the
internationalization and localization of computer software. The standard has been implemented in
many recent technologies, including modern operating systems, XML, Java (and other programming
languages), and the .NET Framework.
Unicode can be implemented by different character encodings. The Unicode standard defines UTF-8,
UTF-16, and UTF-32, and several other encodings are in use. The most commonly used encodings
are UTF-8, UTF-16 and UCS-2, a precursor of UTF-16.
UTF-8, the most widely used by websites, uses one byte for the first 128 code points, and up to 4
bytes for other characters. The first 128 Unicode code points are the ASCII characters; so an ASCII
text is a UTF-8 text.
Fig 5.02 Logo of Unicode.
UCS-2 simply uses two bytes (16 bits) for each character but can only encode the first 65,536 code
points, the so-called Basic Multilingual Plane. With 1,114,112 code points on 17 planes being
possible, and with over 120,000 code points defined so far, many Unicode characters are beyond the
reach of UCS-2. Therefore, UCS-2 is obsolete, though still widely used in software. UTF-16 extends
UCS-2, by using the same 16-bit encoding as UCS-2 for the Basic Multilingual Plane, and a 4-byte
encoding for the other planes. Therefore, a UCS-2 text is a UTF-16 text.
UTF-32 (also referred to as UCS-4) uses four bytes for each character. Like UCS-2, the number of
bytes per character is fixed, facilitating character indexing; but unlike UCS-2, UTF-32 is able to
encode all Unicode code points. However, because each character uses four bytes, UTF-32 takes
significantly more space than other encodings, and is not widely used.
5.5 PARITY
Computers have to transfer data from one part to another or from one computer to another. As we saw
the data is in the form of bits (0 and 1). It may be possible that due to some problem data gets
corrupted in the transmission and an error is introduced. This means that a 0 may be incorrectly be
stored or transmitted as 1 or vice versa.
There is a mechanism to detect a data loss. An extra bit is transmitted which is called a parity bit. For
example suppose a computer is dealing with data which requires maximum 128 possible
combinations. For example our keyboard has 103 keys, add another 10 symbols for internal system

purposes. Thus maximum128 symbols need to be transmitted. As 128 is equal to 27, we require 7 bits
to send and receive such information which can be expressed using 128 symbols. Now what we do is
we add an extra bit and we will be using 8 bits. The value of this extra bit will be such that total
number of 1’s in the string (including parity bit) will be even.
Thus, suppose we wish to send 1010 001 as our original 7-bit signal. There are three 1’s in this binary
string. Hence we add parity bit (at the leftmost place) which is equal to 1. Thus we use 1101 0001 to
represent this number. There are now even number of 1’s.
If when sending and receiving the data, there are transmission loss and one bit gets disturbed, we will
be able to note that some problem has occurred. For example if the last (rightmost) bit has become 0,
the transmitted symbol would be 1101 0000. The system will note that there are three 1’s (odd
number). Thus this symbol is incorrect. The system will request the sender to send it again.
Of course if there are two or four incorrect bits, the system will not be able to detect it.
The example which we considered above used a system where there is even number of 1’s expected.
Such system is called Even Parity system. There are other systems which use Odd Parity (the number
of 1’s are expected to be Odd)
CHECK YOUR PROGRESS
Describe the concept of Unicode.
Discuss the how computer knows that an error has occurred in data transmission, when an even
parity bit is used.
Explain the concept of parity bit and its importance.
Explain under what circumstances the parity bit may not be able to detect loss of information in
data transmission.
5.6 MACHINE CYCLES & SPEED

An instruction cycle (sometimes called a fetch–decode–execute cycle) is the basic operational process
of a computer. It is the process by which a computer retrieves a program instruction from its memory,
determines what actions the instruction dictates, and carries out those actions. This cycle is repeated
continuously by a computer's central processing unit (CPU), from boot-up to when the computer is
shut down.
In simpler CPUs the instruction cycle is executed sequentially, each instruction being processed
before the next one is started. In most modern CPUs the instruction cycles are instead executed
concurrently, and often in parallel, through an instruction pipeline: the next instruction starts being

processed before the previous instruction has finished, which is possible because the cycle is broken
up into separate steps.
5.6.1 Components of a simple Digital System

Program counter (PC)
An incrementing counter that keeps track of the memory address of the instruction that is to be
executed next or in other words, holds the address of the instruction to be executed next.
Memory address register (MAR)
Holds the address of a block of memory for reading from or writing to.
Memory data register (MDR)
A two-way register that holds data fetched from memory (and ready for the CPU to process) or
data waiting to be stored in memory. (This is also known as the memory buffer register (MBR).)
Instruction register (IR)
A temporary holding ground for the instruction that has just been fetched from memory.
Control unit (CU)
Decodes the program instruction in the IR, selecting machine resources, such as a data source
register and a particular arithmetic operation, and coordinates activation of those resources.
Arithmetic logic unit (ALU)
Performs mathematical and logical operations.
Floating-point unit (FPU)
Performs floating-point operations.
5.6.2 How does the System execute a program?

Each computer's CPU can have different cycles based on different instruction sets, but will be similar
to the following cycle:
Fetch the instruction: The next instruction is fetched from the memory address that is currently
stored in the program counter (PC), and stored in the instruction register (IR). At the end of the fetch
operation, the PC points to the next instruction that will be read at the next cycle.
Decode the instruction: During this cycle the encoded instruction present in the IR (instruction
register) is interpreted by the decoder.

Read the effective address: In case of a memory instruction (direct or indirect) the execution phase
will be in the next clock pulse. If the instruction has an indirect address, the effective address is read
from main memory, and any required data is fetched from main memory to be processed and then
placed into data registers (Clock Pulse: T3). If the instruction is direct, nothing is done at this clock
pulses. If this is an I/O instruction or a Register instruction, the operation is performed (executed) at
clock Pulse.
Execute the instruction: The control unit of the CPU passes the decoded information as a sequence
of control signals to the relevant function units of the CPU to perform the actions required by the
instruction such as reading values from registers, passing them to the ALU to perform mathematical
or logic functions on them, and writing the result back to a register. If the ALU is involved, it sends a
condition signal back to the CU. The result generated by the operation is stored in the main memory,
or sent to an output device. Based on the condition of any feedback from the ALU, Program Counter
may be updated to a different address from which the next instruction will be fetched.
The cycle is then repeated.
5.6.3 Initiating the cycle

The cycle begins as soon as power is applied to the system, with an initial PC value that is predefined
by the system's architecture (for instance, in Intel IA-32 CPUs, the predefined PC value is 0xfffffff0).
Typically this address points to a set of instructions in read-only memory (ROM), which begins the
process of loading (or booting) the operating system.
Fetching the instruction
Step 1 of the instruction cycle is fetch cycle, which is the same for each instruction:
The CPU sends the PC to the MAR and sends a read command on the address bus
In response to the read command (with address equal to PC), the memory returns the data stored at
the memory location indicated by PC on the data bus
The CPU copies the data from the data bus into its MDR (also known as MBR, see section
Components above)
A fraction of a second later, the CPU copies the data from the MDR to the instruction register (IR)
The PC is incremented so that it points to the following instruction in memory. This step prepares
the CPU for the next cycle.
The control unit fetches the instruction's address from the memory unit.
Decoding the instruction
Step 2 of the instruction Cycle is called the Decode Cycle. The decoding process allows the CPU to
determine what instruction is to be performed, so that the CPU can tell how many operands it needs
to fetch in order to perform the instruction. The opcode fetched from the memory is decoded for the
next steps and moved to the appropriate registers. The decoding is done by the CPU's Control Unit.
Reading the effective address
Step 3 is evaluating which operation it is. If this is a Memory operation - in this step the computer
checks if it's a direct or indirect memory operation:
Direct memory instruction - Nothing is being done.
Indirect memory instruction - The effective address is being read from the memory.
If this is an I/O or Register instruction - the computer checks its kind and executes the instruction.
Executing the instruction
Step 4 of the Instruction Cycle is the Execute Cycle. Here, the function of the instruction is
performed. If the instruction involves arithmetic or logic, the Arithmetic Logic Unit is utilized. This is
the only stage of the instruction cycle that is useful from the perspective of the end user. Everything
else is overhead required to make the execute phase happen.
The machine cycle involves the following steps

Fetch Get a command from main memory
Decode Transform it into computer commands
Execute Actually carry out the commands
Store Write the outcome to main memory
Fig 5.03 The Machine Cycle
In order to add the numbers 7 and 2 and exhibit the answer on the screen it is necessary to take

the following steps:
Fetch Instructions: ‘Get number at address 1001 1010’

1.
2. Decode instructions
3 Execute ALU finds number. (which happens to be 7)
4 Store The number 7 is stored in a temporary spot in main
memory
5 – 8 Repeat steps for another number (=2)
9 Fetch Instructions: ‘Add those two numbers.’
10 Decode instructions
11 Execute ALU adds the number
12 Store The answer is stored in a temporary spot
13 Fetch Instructions: ‘Display answer on screen’
14 Decode instructions
15 Execute Display answer on screen
Such kind of billions of steps is performed in a second, and this effect can be attributable to
the immense speed of the computer. The speed of the computer is dependent on the “Clock” signal
which keeps the Program Counter running. The modern computers run on clock which may be as fast
as 2.8 GHz for the Dell latitude laptop on which I am writing this book. Do you know how fast this
is? My laptop computer sends 2.8 billion pulses to run the program counter every second. That means
every one-third of a nanosecond the Program Counter gets advanced!
CHECK YOUR PROGRESS

Describe the concept of instruction cycle.
Discuss the various components of a simple digital (computer) system in connection with the
concept of instruction cycle.
Explain, using the concept of instruction cycle, how a digital system executes a program.
Explain under what circumstances the parity bit may not be able to detect loss of information in
data transmission.
5.7 MEMORY ADDRESSES

In computing, a memory address is a reference to a specific memory location used at various levels
by software and hardware. Memory addresses are fixed-length sequences of digits conventionally
displayed and manipulated as unsigned integers. Such numerical semantic bases itself upon features
of CPU (such as the instruction pointer and incremental address registers), as well upon use of the
memory like an array endorsed by various programming languages.
5.7.1 Physical addresses

A digital computer's memory, more specifically main memory, consists of many memory locations,
each having a physical address, a code, which the CPU (or other device) can use to access it.
Generally only system software, (i.e. the BIOS, operating systems, and some specialized utility
programs (e.g., memory testers),uses such address of physical memory. This is done using machine
code operands or processor registers, instructing the CPU to direct a hardware device, called the
memory controller, to use the memory bus or system bus, or separate control, address and data
busses, to execute the program's commands. The memory controllers' bus consists of a number of
parallel lines, each represented by a binary digit (bit). The width of the bus, and thus the number of
addressable storage units, and the number of bits in each unit, varies among computers.
5.7.2 Logical addresses

A computer program uses memory addresses to execute machine code, store and retrieve data. In
early computers logical and physical addresses corresponded, but since the introduction of virtual
memory most application programs do not have knowledge of physical addresses. Rather, they
address logical addresses, or virtual addresses, using the computer's memory management unit and
operating system memory mapping.
5.7.3 Contents of each memory location

Each memory location in a stored-program computer holds a binary number or decimal number of
some sort. Its interpretation, as data of some data type or as an instruction, and use are determined by
the instructions which retrieve and manipulate it.
Some early programmers combined instructions and data in words as a way to save memory, when it
was expensive: The Manchester Mark 1 had space in its 40-bit words to store little bits of data – its
processor ignored a small section in the middle of a word – and that was often exploited as extra data
storage. Self-replicating programs such as viruses treat themselves sometimes as data and sometimes
as instructions. Self-modifying code is generally deprecated nowadays, as it makes testing and
maintenance disproportionally difficult to the saving of a few bytes, and can also give incorrect
results because of the compiler or processor's assumptions about the machine's state, but is still
sometimes used deliberately, with great care.
5.7.4 Memory Address and size of Memory

We have seen earlier that if you have a single bit system, it can deal with only two (21)
possibilities or symbols to represent (like 0/1, Yes/No, Success/Failure, Head/Tail). A 2-bit system
will be able to use 4 (22) symbols (00, 01, 10, 11). A four bit system has capacity to deal with 16 (24)
symbols, 8 bit system can handle 256 (28) symbols, 10 bit system can handle around a thousand states
(1024 (210) to be exact). In general, a N bit sytem can handle (2N) symbol.
This means that if you have a memory with 8 bit addresses it will be able to have 256 memory
locations. As I told you, the number 210 is roughly a thousand (1024) it is called a kilo of binary. A
memory which stores 8 bit (i.e., 1 byte) wide binary words and which has 10 bit address line is said to
have 1 kilo byte memory. If you have 16 bit address line it will be able to use 216 locations. If the
word size is one byte we will say it has 26 (32) kilobyte of memory.

CHECK YOUR PROGRESS
Describe the concept of memory addresses.
Discuss how many bits of address lines will be required to use a memory with 128 locations.
Explain the concepts of physical and logical addresses.
5.8 PROCESSOR SPEED

The clock rate typically refers to the frequency at which a chip like a central processing unit
(CPU), one core of a multi-core processor, is running and is used as an indicator of the processor's
speed. It is measured in clock cycles per second or its equivalent, the SI unit hertz (Hz), the clock rate
of the first generation of computers was measured in hertz or kilohertz (kHz), but in the 21st century
the speed of modern CPUs is commonly advertised in gigahertz (GHz). This metric is most useful
when comparing processors within the same family, holding constant other features that may affect
performance. Video card and CPU manufacturers commonly select their highest performing units
from a manufacturing batch and set their maximum clock rate higher, fetching a higher price.
5.8.1 Historical milestones and current records

The first electromechanical general purpose computer, the Z3 operated at a frequency of about 5–
10 Hz. The first electronic general purpose computer, the ENIAC, used a 100 kHz clock in its cycling
unit. As each instruction took 20 cycles, it had an instruction rate of 5 kHz.
The first commercial PC, the Altair 8800 (by MITS), used an Intel 8080 CPU with a clock rate of
2 MHz (2 million cycles per second). The original IBM PC (c. 1981) had a clock rate of 4.77 MHz
(4,772,727 cycles per second). In 1992, both Hewlett-Packard and Digital Equipment Corporation
broke the difficult 100 MHz limit with RISC techniques in the PA-7100 and AXP 21064 DEC Alpha
respectively. In 1995, Intel's P5 Pentium chip ran at 100 MHz (100 million cycles per second). On
March 6, 2000, AMD reached the 1 GHz milestone a few months ahead of Intel. In 2002, an Intel
Pentium 4 model was introduced as the first CPU with a clock rate of 3 GHz (three billion cycles per
second corresponding to ~3.3×10−10seconds or 0.33 nanoseconds per cycle). Since then, the clock
rate of production processors has increased much more slowly, with performance improvements
coming from other design changes.
As of 2011, the Guinness World Record for the highest CPU clock rate is an overclocked, 8.805
GHz AMD Bulldozer-based FX-8150 chip. It surpassed the previous record, a 8.670 GHz AMD FX
"Piledriver" chip.
As of mid-2013, the highest clock rate on a production processor is the IBM zEC12, clocked at
5.5 GHz, which was released in August 2012.

Apart from system clock, there are other factors also which determine how powerful your
computer is. For example:
Bus width: Transmitting the amount of data by the CPU at a time to the main memory and to
input and output devices. (A bus involves any path bits travel) Remember that 8 bits of data at a time
is moved by an 8-bit bus. Moreover, a bus width can be 8, 16, 32, 64, or up to 128. This can be better
understood by asking the question, ‘What is the number of bits that can fit on the bus at a time to
travel from one part of the computer to the other?’
Hence, bigger the number – faster is the transfer of data.
Word size: Word size is the quantity of data the CPU can process at one time. An 8-bit processor
can control 8 bits at a time. Remember that processors can be 8-, 32-, or up to 64-bit.
Hence, bigger the number = faster is the processing speed.
5.9 PHYSICAL COMPONENTS

A computer has various physical parts that are directly involved in processing. The main physical
components include: the motherboard, the memory devices and the processor chip itself.
5.9.1 Microprocessor
Microprocessor is a computer processor which incorporates the functions of a computer's central
processing unit (CPU) on a single integrated circuit (IC), or at most a few integrated circuits. The
microprocessor is a multipurpose, clock driven, register based, digital-integrated circuit which accepts
binary data as input, processes it according to instructions stored in its memory, and provides results
as output. Microprocessors contain both combinational logic and sequential digital logic.
Microprocessors operate on numbers and symbols represented in the binary numeral system.
The integration of a whole CPU onto a single chip or on a few chips greatly reduced the cost of
processing power, increasing efficiency. Integrated circuit processors are produced in large numbers
by highly automated processes resulting in a low per unit cost. Single-chip processors increase
reliability as there are many fewer electrical connections to fail. As microprocessor designs get better,
the cost of manufacturing a chip (with smaller components built on a semiconductor chip the same
size) generally stays the same.
Before microprocessors, small computers had been built using racks of circuit boards with many
medium- and small-scale integrated circuits . Microprocessors combined this into one or a few large-
scale ICs. Continued increases in microprocessor capacity have since rendered other forms of
computers almost completely obsolete (see history of computing hardware), with one or more
microprocessors used in everything from the smallest embedded systems and handheld devices to the
largest mainframes and supercomputers.

Fig 5.04: Intel Core i7 8th Generation Processor (https://www.engadget.com/2017/09/25/intel-
8th-gen-desktop-chips/)
5.9.2 Random-access memory

Random-access memory (RAM /ræm/) is a form of computer data storage which stores
frequently used program instructions to increase the general speed of a system. A random-access
memory device allows data items to be read or written in almost the same amount of time irrespective
of the physical location of data inside the memory. In contrast, with other direct-access data storage
media such as hard disks, CD-RWs, DVD-RWs and the older magnetic tapes and drum memory, the
time required to read and write data items varies significantly depending on their physical locations
on the recording medium, due to mechanical limitations such as media rotation speeds and arm
movement.
RAM contains multiplexing and demultiplexing circuitry, to connect the data lines to the
addressed storage for reading or writing the entry. Usually more than one bit of storage is accessed by
the same address, and RAM devices often have multiple data lines and are said to be '8-bit' or '16-bit'
etc. devices.
In today's technology, random-access memory takes the form of integrated circuits. RAM is
normally associated with volatile types of memory (such as DRAM modules), where stored
information is lost if power is removed, although non-volatile RAM has also been developed. Other
types of non-volatile memories exist that allow random access for read operations, but either do not
allow write operations or have other kinds of limitations on them. These include most types of ROM
and a type of flash memory called NOR-Flash.
Virtual memory

Most modern operating systems employ a method of extending RAM capacity, known as "virtual
memory". A portion of the computer's hard drive is set aside for a paging file or a scratch partition,
and the combination of physical RAM and the paging file form the system's total memory. (For
example, if a computer has 2 GB of RAM and a 1 GB page file, the operating system has 3 GB total
memory available to it.) When the system runs low on physical memory, it can "swap" portions of
RAM to the paging file to make room for new data, as well as to read previously swapped
information back into RAM. Excessive use of this mechanism results in thrashing and generally
hampers overall system performance, mainly because hard drives are far slower than RAM.
Integrated-circuit RAM chips came into the market in the early 1970s, with the first
commercially available DRAM chip, the Intel 1103, introduced in October 1970.
Fig 5.05: Laptop RAM
CHECK YOUR PROGRESS
Describe the concept of processor speed.
Discuss various historical milestones in attaining high processor speed and the current record of
processor speed.
Explain the importance of the microprocessor in a computer system.
Elaborate the concept and importance of Random Access Memory (RAM) in a computer
system.
Elucidate the concept of virtual memory in the modern computers.

5.10 MOTHERBOARD
A motherboard (sometimes alternatively known as the mainboard, system board, baseboard,
planar board or logic board, or colloquially, a mobo) is the main printed circuit board (PCB) found in
general
eral purpose microcomputers and other expandable systems. It holds and allows communication
between many of the crucial electronic components of a system, such as the central processing unit
(CPU) and memory, and provides connectors for other peripherals. Unlike a backplane, a
motherboard usually contains significant sub-systems
sub systems such as the central processor, the chipset's
input/output and memory controllers, interface connectors, and other components integrated for
general purpose use.
Motherboard specifically refers to a PCB with expansion capability and as the name suggests,
this board is often referred to as the "mother" of all components attached to it, which often include
peripherals, interface cards, and daughtercards: sound cards, video cards,
cards, network cards, hard drives,
or other forms of persistent storage; TV tuner cards, cards providing extra USB or FireWire slots and
a variety of other custom components.
Similarly, the term mainboard is applied to devices with a single board and no additional
additio
expansions or capability, such as controlling boards in laser printers, televisions, washing machines
and other embedded systems with limited expansion abilities.
Fig 5.06: Motherboard for an Acer desktop personal computer, showing the typical compo
components
and interfaces that are found on a motherboard. This model was made by Foxconn in 2007, and
follows the microATX layout (known as the "form factor") usually employed for desktop computers.

5.10.1 Design
A motherboard provides the electrical connections by which the other components of the
system communicate. Unlike a backplane, it also contains the central processing unit and hosts other
subsystems and devices.
A typical desktop computer has its microprocessor, main memory, and other essential
components connected to the motherboard. Other components such as external storage, controllers for
video display and sound, and peripheral devices may be attached to the motherboard as plug-in cards
or via cables; in modern microcomputers it is increasingly common to integrate some of these
peripherals into the motherboard itself.
An important component of a motherboard is the microprocessor's supporting chipset, which

provides the supporting interfaces between the CPU and the various buses and external components.
This chipset determines, to an extent, the features and capabilities of the motherboard.
Modern motherboards include:
• Sockets (or slots) in which one or more microprocessors may be installed. In the case of
CPUs in ball grid array packages, such as the VIA C3, the CPU is directly soldered to the
motherboard.
• Slots into which the system's main memory is to be installed (typically in the form of
DIMM modules containing DRAM chips)
• A chipset which forms an interface between the CPU's front-side bus, main memory, and
peripheral buses
• Non-volatile memory chips (usually Flash ROM in modern motherboards) containing the
system's firmware or BIOS
• A clock generator which produces the system clock signal to synchronize the various
components
• Slots for expansion cards (the interface to the system via the buses supported by the
chipset)
• Power connectors, which receive electrical power from the computer power supply and
distribute it to the CPU, chipset, main memory, and expansion cards. As of 2007, some
graphics cards (e.g. GeForce 8 and Radeon R600) require more power than the motherboard
can provide, and thus dedicated connectors have been introduced to attach them directly to
the power supply.
• Connectors for hard drives, typically SATA only. Disk drives also connect to the power
supply.
Additionally, nearly all motherboards include logic and connectors to support commonly
used input devices, such as USB for mouse devices and keyboards. Early personal computers such as
the Apple II or IBM PC included only this minimal peripheral support on the motherboard.
Occasionally video interface hardware was also integrated into the motherboard; for example, on the
Apple II and rarely on IBM-compatible computers such as the IBM PC Jr. Additional peripherals
such as disk controllers and serial ports were provided as expansion cards.
Given the high thermal design power of high-speed computer CPUs and components, modern
motherboards nearly always include heat sinks and mounting points for fans to dissipate excess heat.

5.11 INDUSTRY STANDARD ARCHITECTURE (ISA)
Industry Standard Architecture (ISA) is a retronym term for the 16-bit internal bus of IBM
PC/AT and similar computers based on the Intel 80286 and its immediate successors during the
1980s. The bus was (largely) backward compatible with the 8-bit bus of the 8088-based IBM PC,
including the IBM PC/XT as well as IBM PC compatibles.
Originally referred to as the PC/AT-bus it was also termed I/O Channel by IBM. The ISA
concept was coined by competing PC-clone manufacturers in the late 1980s or early 1990s as a
reaction to IBM attempts to replace the AT-bus with its new and incompatible Micro Channel
architecture.
The 16-bit ISA bus was also used with 32-bit processors for several years. An attempt to extend it
to 32 bits, called Extended Industry Standard Architecture (EISA), was not very successful, however.
Later buses such as VESA Local Bus and PCI were used instead, often along with ISA slots on the
same mainboard. Derivatives of the AT bus structure were and still are used in ATA/IDE, the
PCMCIA standard, Compact Flash, the PC/104 bus, and internally within Super I/O chips.
Fig 5.07: Five 16-bit and one 8-bit ISA slots on a motherboard.
5.11.1 8-Bit ISA Slots

Many shorter ISA slots can be found in old motherboards. You any observe that yours is a double slot
(called ’16-bit’ ISA) with an opening among them. Like many modem cards, the bigger slot can still
choose an older 8-bit ISA card Figure 5.7 depicts a motherboard with three 16-bit ISA slots.
5.11.2 Peripheral Component Interconnect (PCI) Slots

Conventional PCI, often shortened to PCI, is a local computer bus for attaching hardware devices
in a computer. PCI is the initialism for Peripheral Component Interconnect and is part of the PCI
Local Bus standard. The PCI bus supports the functions found on a processor bus but in a
standardized format that is independent of any particular processor's native bus. Devices connected to
the PCI bus appear to a bus master to be connected directly to its own bus and are assigned addresses

in the processor's address space. It is a parallel bus, synchronous to a single bus clock.
Fig 5.08: A photo of three PCI slots
Attached devices can take either the form of an integrated circuit fitted onto the motherboard
itself (called a planar device in the PCI specification) or an expansion card that fits into a slot. The
PCI Local Bus was first implemented in IBM PC compatibles, where it displaced the combination of
several slow ISA slots and one fast VESA Local Bus slot as the bus configuration. It has subsequently
been adopted for other computer types. Typical PCI cards used in PCs include: network cards, sound
cards, modems, extra ports such as USB or serial, TV tuner cards and disk controllers. PCI video
cards replaced ISA and VESA cards until growing bandwidth requirements outgrew the capabilities
of PCI. The preferred interface for video cards then became AGP, itself a superset of conventional
PCI, before giving way to PCI Express.
The first version of conventional PCI found in consumer desktop computers was a 32-bit bus
using a 33 MHz bus clock and 5 V signalling, although the PCI 1.0 standard provided for a 64-bit
variant as well. These have one locating notch in the card. Version 2.0 of the PCI standard introduced
3.3 V slots, physically distinguished by a flipped physical connector to preventing accidental
insertion of 5 V cards. Universal cards, which can operate on either voltage, have two notches.
Version 2.1 of the PCI standard introduced optional 66 MHz operation. A server-oriented variant of
conventional PCI, called PCI-X (PCI Extended) operated at frequencies up to 133 MHz for PCI-X 1.0
and up to 533 MHz for PCI-X 2.0. An internal connector for laptop cards, called Mini PCI, was
introduced in version 2.2 of the PCI specification. The PCI bus was also adopted for an external
laptop connector standard – the CardBus. The first PCI specification was developed by Intel, but
subsequent development of the standard became the responsibility of the PCI Special Interest Group
(PCI-SIG).

Conventional PCI and PCI-X are sometimes called Parallel PCI in order to distinguish them
technologically from their more recent successor PCI Express, which adopted a serial, lane-based
architecture. Conventional PCI's heyday in the desktop computer market was approximately 1995–
2005. PCI and PCI-X have become obsolete for most purposes; however, they are still common on
modern desktops for the purposes of backwards compatibility and the low relative cost to produce.
Many kinds of devices previously available on PCI expansion cards are now commonly integrated
onto motherboards or available in USB and PCI Express versions.
5.11.3 Memory Slots

This commonly denotes the slot computer memory and is located into the computer motherboard or
I/O board. This term can also be utilized to depict PC card capable of putting in data on the card.
Fig 5.09: RAM slots on PC (https://www.pcworld.com/article/2957195/components/how-to-

install-new-memory-in-your-pc.html)
CHECK YOUR PROGRESS
Describe the concept of motherboard.
Discuss various important parts of motherboard.
Explain the importance of the ISA (Industry Standard Architecture) a computer system.

Elaborate the concept and importance of PCI slots in a computer system.
Elucidate the importance of having detachable RAM slots in a computer system.
5.12 CONNECTORS
The following two connectors are discussed in three se
sections:
5.12.1 RAM Connectors

RAM is utilized to stock data when the computer is running; however, its contents are erased as soon
as the computer is turned off or restarted. On the other hand, mass storage devices, such as hard
drives keep information dependable
ependable even while switched off. Therefore, RAM is called volatile
memory.
When hard drives cost less per byte stored, then why is RAM used at all? The answer is that
RAM is exceedingly quicker when compared to mass storage devices, such as hard drives. Against a
few milliseconds for a hard drive, it has a response time on the order of a few dozen nanoseconds
(about 70 for DRAM, 60 for EDO RAM, and 10 for SDRAM; as little as 6 ns for DDR SDRAM).
Modules that plug into motherboard connectors act as RAM.
5.12.2 Input-Output
Output Connectors
Input-output
output connectors are found on the rear panel, the motherboard has a particular number or
input/output sockets (see Figure 5.8).
Fig 5.8 Input-Output Connectors
Most motherboards, generally, have the following connectors.
• A parallel port, mainly for connecting old printers.

• USB ports (1.1, low-speed
speed or 2.0, high speed) for linking more recent peripherals.
• Audio plugs (Line-in, Line--Out and microphone) for linking ng sound speakers or a hi-fi
hi system,
and a microphone. This conn
connector interfaces with the built-in sound card.
• RJ45 connector (called LAN or Ethernet port) used for linking the computer to a network. It
matches to a network card incorporated into the moth
motherboard.
• A serial port, for linking old peripherals.
• VGA connector (called SUB SUB-D15),
D15), for linking a monitor. This connector interfaces with the

built-in graphics.
• HDMI connector
5.12.3 Power connections

Power cables connect the AC mains to the Switch Mode Power Supply (SMPS) for desktop
computers. The SMPS receives the AC voltage and converts it into DC voltages like + 5V, 12V,
3.3V and gives stabilised and regulated voltages, very efficiently. This means that even if the input
voltage from the AC source changes from 220V to 250V AC, the DC voltages at output would not
vary (or the variation is extremely small) and the components in the PC where the voltages are
supplied will work smoothly (This is called ‘line regulation’). Secondly, it means that even if the PC
is functioning rigorously and requires more power than the usual, the voltages would remain stable
(This is called ‘load regaulation’)
Fig 5.10: SMPS with casing removed. Note the AC Mains socket and Power Switch
CHECK YOUR PROGRESS

When hard drives cost less per byte stored, then why is RAM used at all?
Discuss various important connectors on motherboard.
Explain the concept of line regulation and load regulation in connection to the power supply to a
computer.
Elaborate the concept of SMPS (switch mode power supply) for computer.
5.13 PROCESSOR SOCKET

In computer hardware, a CPU socket or CPU slot comprises one or more mechanical components
providing mechanical and electrical connections between a microprocessor and a printed circuit board
(PCB). This allows for placing and replacing the central processing unit (CPU) without soldering.
Common sockets have retention clips that apply a constant force, which must be overcome when
a device is inserted. For chips with a large number of pins, either zero insertion force (ZIF) sockets or
land grid array (LGA) sockets are used instead. These designs apply a compression force once either
a handle (for ZIF type) or a surface plate (LGA type) is put into place. This provides superior
mechanical retention while avoiding the risk of bending pins when inserting the chip into the socket.
CPU sockets are used on the motherboard in desktop and server computers. Because they allow
easy swapping of components, they are also used for prototyping new circuits. Laptops typically use
surface-mount CPUs, which take up less space on the motherboard than a socketed part.
Fig 5.11: Socket A (a.k.a Socket 462) a pin grid array socket

A CPU socket is made of plastic, and comes with a lever or latch, and with metal contacts for
each of the pins or lands on the CPU. Many packages are keyed to ensure the proper insertion of the
CPU. CPUs with a PGA (pin grid array) package are inserted into the socket and the latch is closed.
CPUs with an LGA package are inserted into the socket, the latch plate is flipped into position atop
the CPU, and the lever is lowered and locked into place, pressing the CPU's contacts firmly against
the socket's lands and ensuring a good connection, as well as increased mechanical stability.
5.14 SUMMARY
• The most basic function of a computer is to calculate, compare and give an output:
collectively this is called processing.
• It is a fact that the modern computers are digital. This entails that all types of
information is archived as a thread of zeros or ones, intermittently.
• Code values of ones and zeros are attributed to all symbols letters and numbers. A
count of dissimilar digital coding schemes is followed by digital devices.
• In Unicode, 16 bits of character is used. The aim of Unicode is to play every element
used in every script for writing every language on the planet.
• The parity method is used to check errors that might happen due to processing.
• It is a well known fact that the computer does one task at a time. Each task is
dispersed into the most basic steps.
• One of the various ways to evaluate computer speeds is called MIPS (millions of
instructions per second).
• As you must be aware, computers function quickly and accurately. However, how
fast a computer gets things done depends on many factors. The processor speed is one
such important factor. It is important to explain the factor that decides the processor’s
speed.
• A computer has got various physical parts that are straightaway involved in
processing. The main physical components include the motherboard are the main
ones the memory devices and the processor chip itself.
• The underlying circuit board of a computer is known as motherboard. Different
components, such as the RAM, CPU, hard drive(s), optical drives and disk drives are
all connected to the various ports on the motherboard.
• Like modern cards and sound cards. ISA is a form os socket for plugging in
peripheral devices. Each card needs to be plugged through an input output (I/O) port
(or several straight I/O ports). It can also be set up by the CPU using a system called
plug-n-play (PnP).
• Power cables often wriggle free from PC cases over time or sometimes after being
replaced around. Assuring every point from where electricity is supplied to the
computer system is ordinarily a first step, especially when a computer is not on.

• Also called the microprocessor, the processor is as the computer’s brain. It processes
programs utilizing a set of directions. The processor is qualified by its frequency, the
rate at which it accomplishes instructions. This entails that an 800 MHz processor can
function 800 million operations per second.
5.15 KEY TERMS

• Processing: The fundamental function a computer does; this involue decisions,
calculations and comparisons.
• Binary: The number system used in computer written with just digits 0 and 1.
• Machine cycle: Involves one round of steps from getting an instruction back to
getting the next instruction.
• MIPS: The method by which the speed os a computer is measured.
• Word size: The quantity of data the CPU can process at one time.
• Motherboard: The underlying circuit board of a computer.
• ISA slots: A form of socket for plugging in peripheral devices. Each card requires to
be talked to through an 1/0 port (or several straight 1/0 ports)
• Microprocessor: Processes programs utilizing a set of directions. The processor is
qualified by its frequency, the rate at which it accomplishes instructions.
• PCI: It interfaces are like ISA slots but are a new standard directed at high-
performance computer peripherals like graphics cards and networking cards.
• RAM: utilized to stock data when the computer is running. However, its contents are
wiped out as soon as the computer is turned off or restarted. It is also called ‘volatile
memory’.
5.13 END QUESTIONS

1. Describe the concept of processing in a computer system.
2. Discuss the how computer understands the data in binary numbers.
3. Explain how a binary number can be converted into decimal number which we
use in our daily life.
4. Explain how many symbols a binary (computer) system with 5bits can handle.
5. Describe the concept of Unicode.
6. Discuss the how computer knows that an error has occurred in data transmission,
when an even parity bit is used.
7. Explain the concept of parity bit and its importance.
8. Explain under what circumstances the parity bit may not be able to detect loss of
information in data transmission
9. Describe the concept of instruction cycle.

10. Discuss the various components of a simple digital (computer) system in
connection with the concept of instruction cycle.
11. Explain, using the concept of instruction cycle, how a digital system executes a
program.
12. Explain under what circumstances the parity bit may not be able to detect loss of
information in data transmission.
13. Describe the concept of memory addresses.
14. Discuss how many bits of address lines will be required to use a memory with 128
locations.
15. Explain the concepts of physical and logical addresses.
16. Describe the concept of processor speed.
17. Discuss various historical milestones in attaining high processor speed and the
current record of processor speed.
18. Explain the importance of the microprocessor in a computer system.
19. Elaborate the concept and importance of Random Access Memory (RAM) in a
computer system.
20. Elucidate the concept of virtual memory in the modern computers.
21. Describe the concept of motherboard.
22. Discuss various important parts of motherboard.
23. Explain the importance of the ISA (Industry Standard Architecture) a computer
system.
24. Elaborate the concept and importance of PCI slots in a computer system.
25. Elucidate the importance of having detachable RAM slots in a computer system.
26. When hard drives cost less per byte stored, then why is RAM used at all?
27. Discuss various important connectors on motherboard.
28. Explain the concept of line regulation and load regulation in connection to the
power supply to a computer.
29. Elaborate the concept of SMPS (switch mode power supply) for computer.
5.14 REFERENCES
Kempf. Karl. 1961. History Monograph: Electronic Computers within the Ordanance Corps.
Aberdeen Proving Ground: United States Army
Digital Equipment Corporation. 1972. Processor Handbook. Maynard, MA: Digital Equipment
Corporation
Verma, G. & N. Mielke. 1988. Reliability performance of ETOX- based flash Memories. IEEE
Internatinal: Reliability Physics Symposium.
Lavington, Simon. 1998. A History of Manchestor Computers, 2nd Edition. Swindon: The British
Computer Society.

https://www.pcworld.com/article/2957195/components/how-to-install-new-memory-in-your-
pc.html
Wikipedia (Unicode, Instruction cycle, Memory Address, Clock rate, Microprocessor, Random-
access memory, Motherboard, Industry Standard Architecture, Conventional PCI, CPU socket)

UNIT 6: OUTPUT DEVICES
6.0 BEFORE WE BEGIN

In order to communicate, you need to receive and send information. The computer does this using
input and output devices. We have learned the basics of the computer in the previous Units. We will
now study the way in which the computer communicates to us. We will study the forms of outputs.
When we just wish to see the output as a temporary method, we use the output communicated to us
through its screen. When we wish to study the data in details or wish to show it to others then we take
print outs of the information. Taking printout is not a good idea from environmental concern as well
as it incurs more cost to us.
The computer screen allows us to see data representation as numbers, text, still pictures including
graphical representation of data (pie chart, bar charts, etc) and photographs in colour, as well as
motion pictures showing time evolution of a phenomena, animation, simulation and movie clips.
We will be studying Printers and Screens in this Unit.
6.1 UNIT OBJECTIVES

After going through this unit, will be able to:
• Explain the various forms and classes of output

• Discuss printers and plotters.
• Describe different types of screens.
6.2 FORMS OF OUTPUT

A computer communicates to us through its output devices. The earliest microprocessor based
systems used Light Emitting Diode (LED) arranged as arrays of lamps or Seven Segment Displays
for communicating information.
Fig 6.01: Seven Segment Displays were the early devices to display information.

6.2.1 Display devices
A display device is an output device that visually conveys text, graphics, and video information.
Information shown on a display device is called soft copy because the information exists
electronically and is displayed for a temporary period of time. Display devices include CRT monitors,
LCD monitors and displays, gas plasma monitors, and televisions.
6.2.2 Input/output
Fig
6.02: Inputs are the signals or data received by the system, and outputs are the signals or data sent
from it.
There are many input and output devices such as multifunction printers and computer-based
navigation systems that are used for specialized or unique applications. In computing, input/output
refers to the communication between an information processing system (such as a computer), and the
outside world. Inputs are the signals or data received by the system, and outputs are the signals or
data sent from it.
6.2.3 Types of output

Some types of output are text, graphics, tactile, audio, and video. Text consists of characters that are
used to create words, sentences, and paragraphs. Graphics are digital representations of nontext
information such as drawings, charts, photographs, and animation . Tactile output such as raised line
drawings may be useful for some individuals who are blind. Audio is music, speech, or any other
sound. Video consists of images played back at speeds to provide the appearance of full motion.
6.2.4 Graphics (Visual)

A digital image is a numeric representation of an image stored on a computer. They don't have any
physical size until they are displayed on a screen or printed on paper. Until that point, they are just a
collection of numbers on the computer's hard drive that describe the individual elements of a picture
and how they are arranged. Some computers come with built-in graphics capability of . Others need a
device, called a graphics card or graphics adapter board, that has to be added. Unless a computer has
graphics capability built into the motherboard, that translation takes place on the graphics card.
Depending on whether the image resolution is fixed, it may be of vector or raster type. Without
qualifications, the term "digital image" usually refers to raster images also called bitmap images.
Raster images that are composed of pixels and is suited for photo-realistic images. Vector images
which are composed of lines and co-ordinates rather than dots and is more suited to line art, graphs or
fonts. To make a 3-D image, the graphics card first creates a wire frame out of straight lines. Then, it

rasterizes the image (fills in the remaining pixels). It also adds lighting, texture and color.
Fig 6.03: Graphical output displayed on a screen.
6.2.5 Tactile
Haptic technology, or haptics, is a tactile feedback technology which takes advantage of the sense of
touch by applying forces, vibrations, or motions to the user. Several printers and wax jet printers have
the capability of producing raised line drawings. There are also handheld devices that use an array of
vibrating pins to present a tactile outline of the characters or text under the viewing window of the
device.
6.2.6 Audio
Speech output systems can be used to read screen text to computer users. Special software programs
called screen readers attempt to identify and interpret what is being displayed on the screen and
speech synthesizers convert data to vocalized sounds or text. Also it is used to produce music, speech
or other sounds.
6.2.7 Examples of Output Devices

These examples of output devices also include input/output devices. Printers and visual displays are
the most common type of output device for interfacing to people, but voice is becoming increasingly
available.
• Speakers
• Headphones
• Screen (Monitor)
• Printer
• Punched card input/output
• Punched tape
• Voice output communication aid
• Automotive navigation system
• Braille embosser
• Video
• Plotter
• Wireless
6.3 PRINTER
In computing, a printer is a peripheral device which makes a persistent human-readable representation
of graphics or text on paper or similar physical media. The first computer printer design was a
mechanically driven apparatus by Charles Babbage for his difference engine in the 19th century; his
mechanical printer design was not built until 2000. The first electronic printer was the EP-101,
invented by Japanese company Epson and released in 1968. The first commercial printers generally
used mechanisms from electric typewriters and Teletype machines. The demand for higher speed led
to the development of new systems specifically for computer use. In the 1980s were daisy wheel
systems similar to typewriters, line printers that produced similar output but at much higher speed,
and dot matrix systems that could mix text and graphics but produced relatively low-quality output.
The plotter was used for those requiring high quality line art like blueprints.
The introduction of the low-cost laser printer in 1984 with the first HP LaserJet, and the addition of
PostScript in next year's Apple LaserWriter, set off a revolution in printing known as desktop
publishing. Laser printers using PostScript mixed text and graphics, like dot-matrix printers, but at
quality levels formerly available only from commercial typesetting systems. By 1990, most simple
printing tasks like fliers and brochures were now created on personal computers and then laser
printed; expensive offset printing systems were being dumped as scrap. The HP Deskjet of 1988
offered the same advantages as laser printer in terms of flexibility, but produced somewhat lower
quality output (depending on the paper) from much less expensive mechanisms. Inkjet systems
rapidly displaced dot matrix and daisy wheel printers from the market. By the 2000s high-quality
printers of this sort had fallen under the $100 price point and became commonplace.
The rapid update of internet email through the 1990s and into the 2000s has largely displaced the
need for printing as a means of moving documents, and a wide variety of reliable storage systems
means that a "physical backup" is of little benefit today. Even the desire for printed output for "offline
reading" while on mass transit or aircraft has been displaced by e-book readers and tablet computers.
Today, traditional printers are being used more for special purposes, like printing photographs or
artwork, and are no longer a must-have peripheral.
Starting around 2010, 3D printing became an area of intense interest, allowing the creation of
physical objects with the same sort of effort as an early laser printer required to produce a brochure.
These devices are in their earliest stages of development and have not yet become commonplace.
6.3.1 Types of printers

Personal printers are primarily designed to support individual users, and may be connected to only a
single computer. These printers are designed for low-volume, short-turnaround print jobs, requiring
minimal setup time to produce a hard copy of a given document. However, they are generally slow
devices ranging from 6 to around 25 pages per minute (ppm), and the cost per page is relatively high.
However, this is offset by the on-demand convenience. Some printers can print documents stored on
memory cards or from digital cameras and scanners.

Networked or shared printers are "designed for high-volume, high-speed printing." They are usually
shared by many users on a network and can print at speeds of 45 to around 100 ppm. The Xerox 9700
could achieve 120 ppm.
A virtual printer is a piece of computer software whose user interface and API resembles that of a
printer driver, but which is not connected with a physical computer printer. A virtual printer can be
used to create a file which is an image of the data which would be printed, for archival purposes or as
input to another program, for example to create a PDF or to transmit to another system or user.
A 3D printer is a device for making a three-dimensional object from a 3D model or other electronic
data source through additive processes in which successive layers of material (including plastics,
metals, food, cement, wood, and other materials) are laid down under computer control. It is called a
printer by analogy with an inkjet printer which produces a two-dimensional document by a similar
process of depositing a layer of ink on paper.
6.3.2 Technology
The choice of print technology has a great effect on the cost of the printer and cost of operation,
speed, quality and permanence of documents, and noise. Some printer technologies don't work with
certain types of physical media, such as carbon paper or transparencies.
A second aspect of printer technology that is often forgotten is resistance to alteration: liquid ink,
such as from an inkjet head or fabric ribbon, becomes absorbed by the paper fibers, so documents
printed with liquid ink are more difficult to alter than documents printed with toner or solid inks,
which do not penetrate below the paper surface.
Cheques can be printed with liquid ink or on special cheque paper with toner anchorage so that
alterations may be detected. The machine-readable lower portion of a cheque must be printed using
MICR toner or ink. Banks and other clearing houses employ automation equipment that relies on the
magnetic flux from these specially printed characters to function properly.
Modern print technology
The following printing technologies are routinely found in modern printers:
Toner-based printers
A laser printer rapidly produces high quality text and graphics. As with digital photocopiers and
multifunction printers (MFPs), laser printers employ a xerographic printing process but differ from
analog photocopiers in that the image is produced by the direct scanning of a laser beam across the
printer's photoreceptor.

Fig 6.04: HP LaserJet 5 printer
Another toner-based printer is the LED printer which uses an array of LEDs instead of a laser to
cause toner adhesion to the print drum.
Liquid inkjet printers
Liquid ink cartridge from Hewlett-Packard HP 845C inkjet printer
Inkjet printers operate by propelling variably sized droplets of liquid ink onto almost any sized page.
They are the most common type of computer printer used by consumers.
Solid ink printers
Solid ink printers, also known as phase-change printers, are a type of thermal transfer printer. They
use solid sticks of CMYK-coloured ink, similar in consistency to candle wax, which are melted and
fed into a piezo crystal operated print-head. The printhead sprays the ink on a rotating, oil coated
drum. The paper then passes over the print drum, at which time the image is immediately transferred,
or transfixed, to the page. Solid ink printers are most commonly used as colour office printers, and are
excellent at printing on transparencies and other non-porous media. Solid ink printers can produce
excellent results. Acquisition and operating costs are similar to laser printers. Drawbacks of the
technology include high energy consumption and long warm-up times from a cold state. Also, some
users complain that the resulting prints are difficult to write on, as the wax tends to repel inks from

pens, and are difficult to feed through automatic document feeders, but these traits have been
significantly reduced in later models. In addition, this type of printer is only available from one
manufacturer, Xerox, manufactured as part of their Xerox Phaser office printer line. Previously, solid
ink printers were manufactured by Tektronix, but Tek sold the printing business to Xerox in 2001.
Dye-sublimation printers
A dye-sublimation printer (or dye-sub printer) is a printer which employs a printing process that uses
heat to transfer dye to a medium such as a plastic card, paper or canvas. The process is usually to lay
one colour at a time using a ribbon that has colour panels. Dye-sub printers are intended primarily for
high-quality colour applications, including colour photography; and are less well-suited for text.
While once the province of high-end print shops, dye-sublimation printers are now increasingly used
as dedicated consumer photo printers.
Thermal printers
Fig 6.05: Receipt printer printing a Twitter timeline
Thermal printers work by selectively heating regions of special heat-sensitive paper. Monochrome
thermal printers are used in cash registers, ATMs, gasoline dispensers and some older inexpensive fax
machines. Colours can be achieved with special papers and different temperatures and heating rates
for different colours; these coloured sheets are not required in black-and-white output. One example
is Zink (a portmanteau of "zero ink").
Obsolete and special-purpose printing technologies
The following technologies are either obsolete, or limited to special applications though most were, at
one time, in widespread use.
Daisy wheel printers

Fig 6.06: "daisy wheel" print element
Daisy wheel printers operate in much the same fashion as a typewriter. A hammer strikes a wheel
with petals, the "daisy wheel", each petal containing a letter form at its tip. The letter form strikes a
ribbon of ink, depositing the ink on the page and thus printing a character. By rotating the daisy
wheel, different characters are selected for printing. These printers were also referred to as letter-
quality printers because they could produce text which was as clear and crisp as a typewriter. The
fastest letter-quality printers printed at 30 characters per second.
Impact printers
Impact printers rely on a forcible impact to transfer ink to the media. The impact printer uses a print
head that either hits the surface of the ink ribbon, pressing the ink ribbon against the paper (similar to
the action of a typewriter), or, less commonly, hits the back of the paper, pressing the paper against
the ink ribbon (the IBM 1403 for example). All but the dot matrix printer rely on the use of fully
formed characters, letterforms that represent each of the characters that the printer was capable of
printing. In addition, most of these printers were limited to monochrome, or sometimes two-color,
printing in a single typeface at one time, although bolding and underlining of text could be done by
"overstriking", that is, printing two or more impressions either in the same character position or
slightly offset. Impact printers varieties include typewriter-derived printers, teletypewriter-derived
printers, daisywheel printers, dot matrix printers and line printers. Dot matrix printers remain in
common use in businesses where multi-part forms are printed. An overview of impact printing
contains a detailed description of many of the technologies used.
Dot-matrix printers
Sample output from 9-pin dot matrix printer (one character expanded to show detail)

The term dot matrix printer is used for impact printers that use a matrix of small pins to transfer ink to
the page. The advantage of dot matrix over other impact printers is that they can produce graphical
images in addition to text; however the text is generally of poorer quality than impact printers that use
letterforms (type).
Dot-matrix printers can be broadly divided into two major classes:
• Ballistic wire printers

• Stored energy printers
Dot matrix printers can either be character-based or line-based (that is, a single horizontal series of
pixels across the page), referring to the configuration of the print head.
In the 1970s & 80s, dot matrix printers were one of the more common types of printers used for
general use, such as for home and small office use. Such printers normally had either 9 or 24 pins on
the print head (early 7 pin printers also existed, which did not print descenders). There was a period
during the early home computer era when a range of printers were manufactured under many brands
such as the Commodore VIC-1525 using the Seikosha Uni-Hammer system. This used a single
solenoid with an oblique striker that would be actuated 7 times for each column of 7 vertical pixels
while the head was moving at a constant speed. The angle of the striker would align the dots
vertically even though the head had moved one dot spacing in the time. The vertical dot position was
controlled by a synchronised longitudinally ribbed platen behind the paper that rotated rapidly with a
rib moving vertically seven dot spacings in the time it took to print one pixel column. 24-pin print
heads were able to print at a higher quality and started to offer additional type styles and were
marketed as Near Letter Quality by some vendors. Once the price of inkjet printers dropped to the
point where they were competitive with dot matrix printers, dot matrix printers began to fall out of
favour for general use.
Some dot matrix printers, such as the NEC P6300, can be upgraded to print in colour. This is
achieved through the use of a four-colour ribbon mounted on a mechanism (provided in an upgrade
kit that replaces the standard black ribbon mechanism after installation) that raises and lowers the
ribbons as needed. Colour graphics are generally printed in four passes at standard resolution, thus
slowing down printing considerably. As a result, colour graphics can take up to four times longer to
print than standard monochrome graphics, or up to 8-16 times as long at high resolution mode.

Fig 6.07: Epson Wide Carriage 9-pin printer - with legal paper 8.5x14, friction feed only. This is
an example of a wide-carriage dot matrix printer, designed for 14-inch (360 mm) wide paper, shown
with 8.5-by-14-inch (220 mm × 360 mm) legal paper. Wide carriage printers were often used in the
field of businesses, to print accounting records on 11-by-14-inch (280 mm × 360 mm) tractor-feed
paper. They were also called "132-column printers".
Dot matrix printers are still commonly used in low-cost, low-quality applications such as cash
registers, or in demanding, very high volume applications like invoice printing. Impact printing,
unlike laser printing, allows the pressure of the print head to be applied to a stack of two or more
forms to print multi-part documents such as sales invoices and credit card receipts using continuous
stationery with carbonless copy paper. Dot-matrix printers were being superseded even as receipt
printers after the end of the twentieth century.
CHECK YOUR PROGRESS

Discuss various types of output devices with examples.
Explain the concept of printer for a computer.
Discuss various types of printers.
What is the importance of impact printers?
Explain the reasons why dot matrix printers are still in use.
Elaborate the importance of thermal printers.

Explain the function of a daisy wheel printer.
6.3.3 Attributes
Printer control languages
Most printers other than line printers accept control characters or unique character sequences to
control various printer functions. These may range from shifting from lower to upper case or from
black to red ribbon on typewriter printers to switching fonts and changing character sizes and colors
on raster printers. Early printer controls were not standardized, with each manufacturer's equipment
having its own set. The IBM Personal Printer Data Stream (PPDS) became a commonly used
command set for dot-matrix printers.
Today, most printers accept one or more page description languages (PDLs). Laser printers with
greater processing power frequently offer support for variants of Hewlett-Packard's Printer Command
Language (PCL), PostScript or XML Paper Specification. Most inkjet devices support manufacturer
proprietary PDLs such as ESC/P. The diversity in mobile platforms have led to various
standardization efforts around device PDLs such as the Printer Working Group (PWG's) PWG Raster.
Printing speed
The speed of early printers was measured in units of characters per minute (cpm) for character
printers, or lines per minute (lpm) for line printers. Modern printers are measured in pages per minute
(ppm). These measures are used primarily as a marketing tool, and are not as well standardised as
toner yields. Usually pages per minute refers to sparse monochrome office documents, rather than
dense pictures which usually print much more slowly, especially colour images. PPM are most of the
time referring to A4 paper in Europe and letter paper in the United States, resulting in a 5-10%
difference.
Printing mode
The data received by a printer may be:
• A string of characters
• A bitmapped image
• A vector image
• A computer program written in a page description language, such as PCL or PostScript
• Some printers can process all four types of data, others not.
• Character printers, such as daisy wheel printers, can handle only plain text data or rather
simple point plots.
• Pen plotters typically process vector images. Inkjet based plotters can adequately
reproduce all four.
Modern printing technology, such as laser printers and inkjet printers, can adequately reproduce all

four. This is especially true of printers equipped with support for PCL or PostScript, which includes
the vast majority of printers produced today.
Today it is possible to print everything (even plain text) by sending ready bitmapped images to the
printer. This allows better control over formatting, especially among machines from different
vendors. Many printer drivers do not use the text mode at all, even if the printer is capable of it.
Monochrome, colour and photo printers
A monochrome printer can only produce an image consisting of one colour, usually black. A
monochrome printer may also be able to produce various tones of that color, such as a grey-scale. A
colour printer can produce images of multiple colours. A photo printer is a colour printer that can
produce images that mimic the colour range (gamut) and resolution of prints made from photographic
film. Many can be used on a standalone basis without a computer, using a memory card or USB
connector.
Page yield
The page yield is number of pages that can be printed from a toner cartridge or ink cartridge—before
the cartridge needs to be refilled or replaced. The actual number of pages yielded by a specific
cartridge depends on a number of factors.
For a fair comparison, many laser printer manufacturers use the ISO/IEC 19752 process to measure
the toner cartridge yield.
Cost per page
In order to fairly compare operating expenses of printers with a relatively small ink cartridge to
printers with a larger, more expensive toner cartridge that typically holds more toner and so prints
more pages before the cartridge needs to be replaced, many people prefer to estimate operating
expenses in terms of cost per page (CPP).
Business model
Often the "razor and blades" business model is applied. That is, a company may sell a printer at cost,
and make profits on the ink cartridge, paper, or some other replacement part. This has caused legal
disputes regarding the right of companies other than the printer manufacturer to sell compatible ink
cartridges. To protect their business model, several manufacturers invest heavily in developing new
cartridge technology and patenting it.
Other manufacturers, in reaction to the challenges from using this business model, choose to make
more money on printers and less on the ink, promoting the latter through their advertising campaigns.
Finally, this generates two clearly different proposals: "cheap printer – expensive ink" or "expensive
printer – cheap ink". Ultimately, the consumer decision depends on their reference interest rate or
their time preference. From an economics viewpoint, there is a clear trade-off between cost per copy
and cost of the printer.
Wireless printers

More than half of all printers sold at U.S. retail in 2010 were wireless-capable, but nearly three-
quarters of consumers who have access to those printers weren't taking advantage of the increased
access to print from multiple devices according to the new Wireless Printing Study.
CHECK YOUR PROGRESS
Discuss various types of printer controller languages.
Explain the concept of printing speed.
Discuss various types of printing modes.
What is the importance of impact printers?
Describe monochrome, color and photo printers.
Elaborate the importance of cost per page for a printer.
Explain the razor and blade business model for printer sale.
Explain the operation of wireless printers.
6.4 SCREEN DISPLAY

A computer monitor is an output device which displays the information in pictorial form. A monitor
usually comprises the display device, circuitry, casing, and power supply. The display device in
modern monitors is typically a thin film transistor liquid crystal display (TFT-LCD) with LED
backlighting having replaced cold-cathode fluorescent lamp (CCFL) backlighting. Older monitors
used a cathode ray tube (CRT). Monitors are connected to the computer via VGA, Digital Visual
Interface (DVI), HDMI, DisplayPort, Thunderbolt, low-voltage differential signaling (LVDS) or
other proprietary connectors and signals.
Originally, computer monitors were used for data processing while television receivers were used for
entertainment. From the 1980s onwards, computers (and their monitors) have been used for both data
processing and entertainment, while televisions have implemented some computer functionality. The
common aspect ratio of televisions, and computer monitors, has changed from 4:3 to 16:10, to 16:9.
Technologies
Multiple technologies have been used for computer monitors. Until the 21st century most used
cathode ray tubes but they have largely been superseded by LCD monitors.
6.4.1 Cathode ray tube

The first computer monitors used cathode ray tubes (CRTs). Prior to the advent of home computers in
the late 1970s, it was common for a video display terminal (VDT) using a CRT to be physically
integrated with a keyboard and other components of the system in a single large chassis. The display
was monochrome and far less sharp and detailed than on a modern flat-panel monitor, necessitating
the use of relatively large text and severely limiting the amount of information that could be displayed
at one time. High-resolution CRT displays were developed for specialized military, industrial and
scientific applications but they were far too costly for general use.
Fig 6.08: Cathod Ray Tube (CRT) Monitor
Some of the earliest home computers (such as the TRS-80 and Commodore PET) were limited to
monochrome CRT displays, but color display capability was already a standard feature of the
pioneering Apple II, introduced in 1977, and the specialty of the more graphically sophisticated Atari
800, introduced in 1979. Either computer could be connected to the antenna terminals of an ordinary
color TV set or used with a purpose-made CRT color monitor for optimum resolution and color
quality. Lagging several years behind, in 1981 IBM introduced the Color Graphics Adapter, which
could display four colors with a resolution of 320 x 200 pixels, or it could produce 640 x 200 pixels
with two colors. In 1984 IBM introduced the Enhanced Graphics Adapter which was capable of
producing 16 colors and had a resolution of 640 x 350.
By the end of the 1980s color CRT monitors that could clearly display 1024 x 768 pixels were widely
available and increasingly affordable. During the following decade maximum display resolutions
gradually increased and prices continued to fall. CRT technology remained dominant in the PC

monitor market into the new millennium partly because it was cheaper to produce and offered
viewing angles close to 180 degrees. CRTs still offer some image quality advantages over LCDs but
improvements to the latter have made them much less obvious. The dynamic range of early LCD
panels was very poor, and although text and other motionless graphics were sharper than on a CRT,
an LCD characteristic known as pixel lag caused moving graphics to appear noticeably smeared and
blurry.
6.4.2 Liquid crystal display

There are multiple technologies that have been used to implement liquid crystal displays (LCD).
Throughout the 1990s, the primary use of LCD technology as computer monitors was in laptops
where the lower power consumption, lighter weight, and smaller physical size of LCD's justified the
higher price versus a CRT. Commonly, the same laptop would be offered with an assortment of
display options at increasing price points: (active or passive) monochrome, passive color, or active
matrix color (TFT). As volume and manufacturing capability have improved, the monochrome and
passive color technologies were dropped from most product lines.
Fig 6.09: LCD Monitors in a computer laboratory
TFT-LCD is a variant of LCD which is now the dominant technology used for computer monitors.
The first standalone LCDs appeared in the mid-1990s selling for high prices. As prices declined over
a period of years they became more popular, and by 1997 were competing with CRT monitors.
Among the first desktop LCD computer monitors was the Eizo L66 in the mid-1990s, the Apple
Studio Display in 1998, and the Apple Cinema Display in 1999. In 2003, TFT-LCDs outsold CRTs
for the first time, becoming the primary technology used for computer monitors. The main advantages

of LCDs over CRT displays are that LCD's consume less power, take up much less space, and are
considerably lighter. The now common active matrix TFT-LCD technology also has less flickering
than CRTs, which reduces eye strain. On the other hand, CRT monitors have superior contrast, have a
superior response time, are able to use multiple screen resolutions natively, and there is no discernible
flicker if the refresh rate is set to a sufficiently high value. LCD monitors have now very high
temporal accuracy and can be used for vision research.
High dynamic range (HDR) has been implemented into high-end LCD monitors to improve color
accuracy. Since around the late 2000s, widescreen LCD monitors have become popular, in part due to
television series, motion pictures and video games transitioning to high-definition (HD), which makes
standard-width monitors unable to display them correctly as they either stretch or crop HD content.
These types of monitors may also display it in the proper width, however they usually fill the extra
space at the top and bottom of the image with black bars. Other advantages of widescreen monitors
over standard-width monitors is that they make work more productive by displaying more of a user's
documents and images, and allow displaying toolbars with documents. They also have a larger
viewing area, with a typical widescreen monitor having a 16:9 aspect ratio, compared to the 4:3
aspect ratio of a typical standard-width monitor.
6.4.3 Organic light-emitting diode (OLED)
Fig 6.10: Prototype OLED lighting panels
Organic light-emitting diode (OLED) monitors provide higher contrast and better viewing angles than
LCD's but they require more power when displaying documents with white or bright backgrounds. In
2011, a 25-inch (64 cm) OLED monitor cost $7500, but the prices are expected to drop.
Measurements of performance
The performance of a monitor is measured by the following parameters:

• Luminance is measured in candelas per square meter (cd/m2 also called a Nit).
• Aspect ratio is the ratio of the horizontal length to the vertical length. Monitors usually have
the aspect ratio 4:3, 5:4, 16:10 or 16:9.
• Viewable image size is usually measured diagonally, but the actual widths and heights are
more informative since they are not affected by the aspect ratio in the same way. For CRTs,
the viewable size is typically 1 in (25 mm) smaller than the tube itself.
• Display resolution is the number of distinct pixels in each dimension that can be displayed.
For a given display size, maximum resolution is limited by dot pitch.
• Dot pitch is the distance between sub-pixels of the same color in millimeters. In general, the
smaller the dot pitch, the sharper the picture will appear.
• Refresh rate is the number of times in a second that a display is illuminated. Maximum
refresh rate is limited by response time.
• Response time is the time a pixel in a monitor takes to go from active (white) to inactive
(black) and back to active (white) again, measured in milliseconds. Lower numbers mean
faster transitions and therefore fewer visible image artifacts.
• Contrast ratio is the ratio of the luminosity of the brightest color (white) to that of the darkest
color (black) that the monitor is capable of producing.
• Power consumption is measured in watts.
Delta-E: Color accuracy is measured in delta-E; the lower the delta-E, the more accurate the
color representation. A delta-E of below 1 is imperceptible to the human eye. Delta-Es of 2 to
4 are considered good and require a sensitive eye to spot the difference.
• Viewing angle is the maximum angle at which images on the monitor can be viewed, without
excessive degradation to the image. It is measured in degrees horizontally and vertically.
Size
Fig 6.11: The area, height and width of displays with identical diagonal measurements vary
dependent on aspect ratio.
On two-dimensional display devices such as computer monitors the display size or view able image
size is the actual amount of screen space that is available to display a picture, video or working space,
without obstruction from the case or other aspects of the unit's design. The main measurements for
display devices are: width, height, total area and the diagonal.
The size of a display is usually by monitor manufacturers given by the diagonal, i.e. the distance
between two opposite screen corners. This method of measurement is inherited from the method used
for the first generation of CRT television, when picture tubes with circular faces were in common use.
Being circular, it was the external diameter of the glass envelope that described their size. Since these
circular tubes were used to display rectangular images, the diagonal measurement of the rectangular
image was smaller than the diameter of the tube's face (due to the thickness of the glass). This method
continued even when cathode ray tubes were manufactured as rounded rectangles; it had the
advantage of being a single number specifying the size, and was not confusing when the aspect ratio
was universally 4:3.
With the introduction of flat panel technology, the diagonal measurement became the actual diagonal
of the visible display. This meant that an eighteen-inch LCD had a larger visible area than an
eighteen-inch cathode ray tube.
The estimation of the monitor size by the distance between opposite corners does not take into
account the display aspect ratio, so that for example a 16:9 21-inch (53 cm) widescreen display has
less area, than a 21-inch (53 cm) 4:3 screen. The 4:3 screen has dimensions of 16.8 in × 12.6 in (43
cm × 32 cm) and area 211 sq in (1,360 cm2), while the widescreen is 18.3 in × 10.3 in (46 cm × 26
cm), 188 sq in (1,210 cm2).
Aspect ratio
Until about 2003, most computer monitors had a 4:3 aspect ratio and some had 5:4. Between 2003
and 2006, monitors with 16:9 and mostly 16:10 (8:5) aspect ratios became commonly available, first
in laptops and later also in standalone monitors. Reasons for this transition was productive uses for
such monitors, i.e. besides widescreen computer game play and movie viewing, are the word
processor display of two standard letter pages side by side, as well as CAD displays of large-size
drawings and CAD application menus at the same time. In 2008 16:10 became the most common sold
aspect ratio for LCD monitors and the same year 16:10 was the mainstream standard for laptops and
notebook computers.
In 2010 the computer industry started to move over from 16:10 to 16:9 because 16:9 was chosen to be
the standard high-definition television display size, and because they were cheaper to manufacture.
In 2011 non-widescreen displays with 4:3 aspect ratios were only being manufactured in small
quantities. According to Samsung this was because the "Demand for the old 'Square monitors' has
decreased rapidly over the last couple of years," and "I predict that by the end of 2011, production on
all 4:3 or similar panels will be halted due to a lack of demand."
CHECK YOUR PROGRESS

Discuss the concept of screen displays.
Explain the various technologies used in display for computer systems.
Discuss the cathode ray tube (CRT) technology and reasons for its phasing out.
What is the importance of LED technology?
Describe the LCD (liquid crystal display) technology.
Elaborate the importance of OLED technology.
Explain how performance of a display device is measured.
Elaborate the concept of size as measured in diagonal length and area of display.
Explain the concept of aspect ratio and elaborate why aspect ratio of 16:9 is preferred over 4:3.
Resolution
The resolution for computer monitors has increased over time. From 320x200 during the early 1980s,
to 800x600 during the late 1990s. Since 2009, the most commonly sold resolution for computer
monitors is 1920x1080. Before 2013 top-end consumer LCD monitors were limited to 2560x1600 at
30 in (76 cm), excluding Apple products and CRT monitors. Apple introduced 2880x1800 with
Retina MacBook Pro at 15.4 in (39 cm) on June 12, 2012, and introduced a 5120x2880 Retina iMac
at 27 in (69 cm) on October 16, 2014. By 2015 most major display manufacturers had released
3840x2160 resolution displays.
Additional features
Power saving
Most modern monitors will switch to a power-saving mode if no video-input signal is received. This
allows modern operating systems to turn off a monitor after a specified period of inactivity. This also
extends the monitor's service life.
Some monitors will also switch themselves off after a time period on standby.
Most modern laptops provide a method of screen dimming after periods of inactivity or when the
battery is in use. This extends battery life and reduces wear.
Integrated accessories
Many monitors have other accessories (or connections for them) integrated. This places standard

ports within easy reach and eliminates the need for another separate hub, camera, microphone, or set
of speakers. These monitors have advanced microprocessors which contain codec information,
Windows Interface drivers and other small software which help in proper functioning of these
functions.
Glossy screen
Some displays, especially newer LCD monitors, replace the traditional anti-glare matte finish with a
glossy one. This increases color saturation and sharpness but reflections from lights and windows are
very visible. Anti-reflective coatings are sometimes applied to help reduce reflections, although this
only mitigates the effect.
Curved designs
In about 2009, NEC/Alienware together with Ostendo Technologies (based in Carlsbad, CA) were
offering a curved (concave) 43-inch (110 cm) monitor that allows better viewing angles near the
edges, covering 75% of peripheral vision. This monitor had 2880x900 resolution, LED backlight and
was marketed as suitable both for gaming and office work, while for $6499 it was rather expensive.
While this particular monitor is no longer in production, most PC manufacturers now offer some sort
of curved desktop display.
CHECK YOUR PROGRESS
Discuss the concept of resolution for screen displays.
Explain the power saving in display for computer systems.
Discuss the integrated accessories for the displays.
6.5 SPEAKERS
A loudspeaker (or loud-speaker or speaker) is a device (called transducer) which converts an
electrical audio signal into a corresponding sound. The most widely used type of speaker in the 2010s
is the dynamic speaker, invented in 1925 by Edward W. Kellogg and Chester W. Rice. The dynamic
speaker operates on the same basic principle as a dynamic microphone, but in reverse, to produce
sound from an electrical signal. When an alternating current electrical audio signal is applied to its
voice coil, a coil of wire suspended in a circular gap between the poles of a permanent magnet, the
coil is forced to move rapidly back and forth due to Faraday's law of induction, which causes a
diaphragm (usually conically shaped) attached to the coil to move back and forth, pushing on the air
to create sound waves. Besides this most common method, there are several alternative technologies
that can be used to convert an electrical signal into sound. The sound source (e.g., a sound recording
or a microphone) must be amplified or strengthened with an audio power amplifier before the signal
is sent to the speaker.

Fig 6.12: Loudspeaker for home use with three types of dynamic drivers (1)Mid-range driver
(2)Tweeter (3)Woofers The hole below the lowest woofer is a port for a bass reflex system
Speakers are typically housed in a speaker enclosure or speaker cabinet which is often a rectangular
or square box made of wood or sometimes plastic. The enclosure's materials and design play an
important role in the quality of the sound. Where high fidelity reproduction of sound is required,
multiple loudspeaker transducers are often mounted in the same enclosure, each reproducing a part of
the audible frequency range (picture at right). In this case the individual speakers are referred to as
"drivers" and the entire unit is called a loudspeaker. Drivers made for reproducing high audio
frequencies are called tweeters, those for middle frequencies are called mid-range drivers, and those
for low frequencies are called woofers. Smaller loudspeakers are found in devices such as radios,
televisions, portable audio players, computers, and electronic musical instruments . Larger
loudspeaker systems are used for music, sound reinforcement in theatres and concerts, and in public
address systems.

6.6 SUMMERY
• Output is the method of producing results from the data for getting useful
information.
• Before being given to us in human readable form, the output is stored inside the
computer for further processing and the output produced by the computer after
processing must also be kept somewhere inside the computer.
• The commonly utilized ways of output are the printer and computer screen. Whatever
is seen on the computer screen, one can take printout of the same (text, visual
graphics, etc.) on a printer.
• It is not necessary that both monitor screens and printers employ the same data
formatting principles. Gone are the days when the way something appeared on the
screen was really dissimilar from how it changed when taken a printout.
• Impact printers print the output when a hammer hits a ribbon. A mark is created on
the paper behind it when the ribbon is hit. An impact printer can print more than a
single copy of a document at a time if carbon paper is placed in the printer.
• By pounding a column of 9 or 24 pins against a ribbon, a dot-matrix printer produces
an image. As the print head (which contains the pins) moves across the page,
characters are made.
• The fundamental idea of a plasma display is to light up tiny, colored fluorescent lights
to develop an image.
• Non-impact printers are very silent while printing. But this type of printers cannot
print several copies using carbon paper.
• LCD (Liquid-Crystal Display) screens are made up dots, and it is completely flat.
LCD presentations are made of two levels of a polarizing stuff with a liquid-crystal
solvent in the middle.
• A CRT works by moving an election beam back and forth across the back of the
screen. Each time the beam makes a pass across the screen, it lifts up phosphor dots
on the inside of the glass tube, thereby illuminating the active portions of the screen.
6.7 KEY TERMS

• Daisy Wheel Printers: An outdated type of printer seldom in use now.
• Dot Pitch: Length between the dots that make up the picture on the screen.
• Hard Copy: Another term employed for printouts.
• LCD (Liquid Crystal Display) screens: This type of screen is constructed of dots but
is totally flat. LCD presentations are made of two levels of a polarizing stuff with a
liquid-crystal solvent in the middle.
• Line Printers: This type of printer is very quick in giving output. They are expensive
nonetheless, and are utilized when high volumes of output are needed e.g., printing
telephone bills or bank statement.

• Non-Impact Printers: Non-impact printers are very silent while printing. But this type
of printers cannot print several copies using carbon paper. Another fact is that non-
impact printers do not give images by colliding pins or characters against the paper.
• Plasma Screen: The fundamental idea of a plasma display is to light up tiny, colored
fluorescent lights to develop an image. Each pixel is comprised of three fluorescent
lights, such as; a red light, a blue light, and a green light.
6.7 END QUESTIONS

1. Discuss various types of output devices with examples.
2. Explain the concept of printer for a computer.
3. Discuss various types of printers.
4. What is the importance of impact printers?
5. Explain the reasons why dot matrix printers are still in use.
6. Elaborate the importance of thermal printers.
7. Explain the function of a daisy wheel printer
8. Discuss various types of printer controller languages.
9. Explain the concept of printing speed.
10. Discuss various types of printing modes.
11. What is the importance of impact printers?
12. Describe monochrome, color and photo printers.
13. Elaborate the importance of cost per page for a printer.
14. Explain the razor and blade business model for printer sale.
15. Explain the operation of wireless printers.
16. Discuss the concept of screen displays.
17. Explain the various technologies used in display for computer systems.
18. Discuss the cathode ray tube (CRT) technology and reasons for its phasing
out.
19. What is the importance of LED technology?
20. Describe the LCD (liquid crystal display) technology.
21. Elaborate the importance of OLED technology.
22. Explain how performance of a display device is measured.
23. Elaborate the concept of size as measured in diagonal length and area of
display.
24. Explain the concept of aspect ratio and elaborate why aspect ratio of 16:9
is preferred over 4:3.
25. Discuss the concept of resolution for screen displays.
26. Explain the power saving in display for computer systems.
27. Discuss the integrated accessories for the displays.
28. Discuss the concept of loudspeaker in a computer system.
6.8 REFERENCES
Kempf, Karl, (1961). Historical Monograph: Electronic Computers within the Ordnance Corps.
Aberdeen Proving Ground (United States Army).

Phillips, Tony, (2000) ‘The Antikythera Mechanism I’, American Mathematical Society,
retrieved 2006-04-05.
Shannon, Claude Elwood. (1940). A symbolic analysis of relay and switching circuits.
Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Digital Equipment Corporation (1972), (PDF), PDP-11/40 Processor
Handbook. Maynard, MA: Digital Equipment Corporation.
Verma, G; Mielke, N (1988). ‘Reliability performance of ETOX based Flash
Memories, IEEE International Reliability Physics Symposium.
Meuer, Hans; Strohmaier, Erich, Simon, Horst; Dongarra, Jack (2006-11-27-13).’ Architectures
Share Over Time, TOP500. Retrieved 2006-11-27.
Lavington, Simon, (1998). A History of Manchester Computers (2nd edition), Swindow: The
British Computer Society.
Wikipedia (Output device, Printer (computing), Computer monitor, Loudspeaker)

UNIT 7: DATA STORAGE
7.0 INTRODUCTION
As you know, you have to store your data, programs, operating system, and other information for
future use. This involves devices called storage devices. These are a type of memory devices as they
can save and retrieve data. There are several types of memory. The RAM (Random Access Memory)
is the most basic memory which the CPU works on. Part of it may reside inside the microprocessor as
cache. However such devices have volatile in nature. When power is turned off the information
vanishes. Second type of memory is in the form of Hard Disks. They are fairly efficient in data
retrival. Hoever, they are bulky and not easy to distribute. Let us say you have taken photographs
during a picnic and want to give them to you friends. You will not give them on a hard disk.
Other devices which are easy to share include CD, DVD, flash memories, SD, Micro-SD cards, pen
drives.
In this unit, we will learn about data storage in a computer system. The most commonly used from of
secondary storage involves a kind of magnetic disk. It comes in many sizes and stores data on a
magnetic surface. Magnetic disk is known for its high storage capacity and reliability. It also
facilitates direct access to data. This unit will also talk about data storage devices like hard disks,
diskette, other removable magnetic media, such as a pen drive, and so on. In addition, you will learn
about magnetic tape, its types and formats. Further, you will also learn about optical disks, their
similarity and working; their advantages and disadvantages in this unit.
7.1 UNIT OBJECTIVES:

• Provide a fundamental idea about magnetic tape.

• Describe different types of magnetic disks.
• Explain hard disks, diskette, tracks, sectors, clusters, and so on.
• Explain disk formatting and capacity of a disk.
• Discuss magnetic tape, including its types and formats.
• Describe optical disks.
• Elaborate about the similarity and working of optical disks.
• Describe the advantages and disadvantages of optical disks.
7.2 HARD DISKS AND FLOPPY DISKS

A hard disk drive (HDD), hard disk, hard drive or fixed disk[b] is a data storage device that uses
magnetic storage to store and retrieve digital information using one or more rigid rapidly rotating
disks (platters) coated with magnetic material. The platters are paired with magnetic heads, usually

arranged on a moving actuator arm, which read and write data to the platter surfaces. Data is accessed
in a random-access manner, meaning that individual blocks of data can be stored or retrieved in any
order and not only sequentially. HDDs are a type of non-volatile storage, retaining stored data even
when powered off.
Fig 7.01: A 2.5" hard drive that has been opened, exposing its inner workings. This is a 500GB
Western Digital Scorpio Blue hard drive with SATA connections. This 2.5" hard drive is common in
laptops.
Introduced by IBM in 1956, HDDs became the dominant secondary storage device for general-
purpose computers by the early 1960s. Continuously improved, HDDs have maintained this position
into the modern era of servers and personal computers. More than 200 companies have produced
HDDs historically, though after extensive industry consolidation most current units are manufactured
by Seagate, Toshiba, and Western Digital. HDD unit shipments and sales revenues are declining,
though production (exabytes per year) is growing. Flash memory has a growing share of the market
for secondary storage, in the form of solid-state drives (SSDs). SSDs have higher data-transfer rates,
higher areal storage density, better reliability, and much lower latency and access times. Though
SSDs have higher cost per bit, they are replacing HDDs where speed, power consumption, small size,
and durability are important.
The primary characteristics of an HDD are its capacity and performance. Capacity is specified in unit
prefixes corresponding to powers of 1000: a 1-terabyte (TB) drive has a capacity of 1,000 gigabytes
(GB; where 1 gigabyte = 1 billion bytes). Typically, some of an HDD's capacity is unavailable to the

user because it is used by the file system and the computer operating system, and possibly inbuilt
redundancy for error correction and recovery. Performance is specified by the time required to move
the heads to a track or cylinder (average access time) plus the time it takes for the desired sector to
move under the head (average latency, which is a function of the physical rotational speed in
revolutions per minute), and finally the speed at which the data is transmitted (data rate).
The two most common form factors for modern HDDs are 3.5-inch, for desktop computers, and 2.5-
inch, primarily for laptops. HDDs are connected to systems by standard interface cables such as
PATA (Parallel ATA), SATA (Serial ATA), USB or SAS (Serial attached SCSI) cables.
7.2.1 Tracks
A disk drive track is a circular path on the surface of a disk or diskette on which information is
magnetically recorded and from which recorded information is read.
Fig 7.02: Disk structures: (A) Track (B) Geometrical sector (C) Track sector (D) Cluster
A track is a physical division of data in a disk drive, as used in the Cylinder-Head-Record

(CCHHRR) addressing mode of a CKD disk. The concept is concentric, through the physical platters,
being a data circle per each cylinder of the whole disk drive. In other words, the number of tracks on
a single surface in the drive exactly equals the number of cylinders of the drive.
Tracks are subdivided into blocks (or sectors, pages) (see: Storage block and Virtual page).
The term track is sometimes prefaced with the word logical (i.e. "3390-9 has 3 logical tracks per
physical track") to emphasize the fact when used as an abstract concept, not a track in the physical
sense..
7.2.2 Sectors
A wedge-shaped portion of the disk is called a disk sector, as shown in above figure as B. Each sector
of the disk is numbered.
The area of intersection of a track and a sector is called a track sector as shown in Figure as C.
In computer disk storage, a sector is a subdivision of a track on a magnetic disk or optical disc.
Each sector stores a fixed amount of user-accessible data, traditionally 512 bytes for hard disk drives
(HDDs) and 2048 bytes for CD-ROMs and DVD-ROMs. Newer HDDs use 4096-byte (4 KiB)
sectors, which are known as the Advanced Format (AF).
The sector is the minimum storage unit of a hard drive. Most disk partitioning schemes are
designed to have files occupy a multiple of sectors regardless of the file's actual size. Files that do not
fill a whole sector will have the remainder of their last sector filled with zeroes. In practice, operating
systems typically operate on blocks of data, which may span multiple sectors.
Geometrically, the word sector means a portion of a disk between a center, two radii and a
corresponding arc (see Figure 1, item B), which is shaped like a slice of a pie. Thus, the disk sector
(Figure 1, item C) refers to the intersection of a track and geometrical sector.
In disk drives, each physical sector is made up of three basic parts, the sector header, the data
area and the error-correcting code (ECC). The sector header contains information used by the drive
and controller; this information includes sync bytes, address identification, flaw flag and header
parity bytes. The header may also include an alternate address to be used if the data area is
undependable. The address identification is used to ensure that the mechanics of the drive have
positioned the read/write head over the correct location. The data area contains the recorded user data,
while the ECC field contains codes based on the data field, which are used to check and possibly
correct errors that may have been introduced into the data.
7.2.3 Clusters
A set of track sectors, ranging from 2 to 32 or more, is called a cluster and it depends on the
formatting scheme in use.
The general formatting scheme for PCs sets a number of track sectors in a cluster based on the
capacity of the disk, for example, a 1.2 Gig hard drive will have clusters twice as large as a 500 MB
hard drive.

The minimum space used by any read or write is called a cluster. So there are a lot of unused
spaces called slack space in the cluster, apart from the data stored there.
It has been difficult to fully eliminate the problem of slack spaces. One way to deal with these
problems is to reduce the size if a cluster which can be achieved by changing the method of
formatting. It is possible to have more tracks on the disk, or more sectors on a track or the number of
track sectors in a cluster can be reduced
7.2.4 Cylinder
A set of matched tracks is called a cylinder. A track from the top surface and the same track from the
bottom surface of the disk make up a cylinder in a double sided floppy. For floppies, however, this
concept is not very useful
On a hard disk, a cylinder consists of tracks of the same number from all the metal disks contained in
the hard disk. If you put one on top of the other it will somewhat look like a tin can with no top or
bottom- a cylinder.
A computer keeps in its memory the addresses of all the sectors in other to keep track of what it has
put where on a disk, which means remembering some combination of the cylinder, track and sector.
This relives us of remembering all these numbers!
The difference between addressing methods might be in the time it takes for the read/write head to get
into the right position. In the cylinder method, data are written down the disks on the same cylinder.
This is more effective because each metal platter has a read/write head for each side and they all
move together. The computer can put some data on all the platters for ine position of the read/write
heads before moving the heads to a new position.
Cylinder Head Sector method

Cylinder-head-sector (CHS) is an early method for giving addresses to each physical block of data on
a hard disk drive.
Early hard drives didn't come with an embedded disk controller; a separate controller card was used,
and the operating system had to know the exact physical "geometry" of the drive behind the controller
to use it. As the geometry became more complicated and drive sizes grew over time, the CHS
addressing method became restrictive. Since late 1980s, hard drives begun shipping with an
embedded disk controller that had good knowledge of the physical geometry; they would report a
false geometry to the computer, e.g. a larger number of heads than actually present, to gain more
addressable space. These logical CHS values would be translated by the controller, thus CHS
addressing no longer corresponded to any physical attributes of the drive.
Soon after, hard drive interfaces replaced the CHS scheme with logical block addressing, but many
tools for manipulating the master boot record (MBR) partition table still aligned partitions to cylinder
boundaries; thus, artifacts of the CHS addressing were still seen in partitioning programs in the
2010s.

Fig 7.03: CHS system
In early 2010s, the disk size limitations imposed by MBR became problematic and the GUID
Partition Table (GPT) was designed as a replacement; modern computers without MBR no longer use
any notions from CHS addressing.
7.2.5 Disk Formatting and Aft

After
First, after formatting a disk, the entire earlier data is inaccessible.. Therefore this should be kept in
mind, and if there is any data on the disk, it should be saved on any other medium. Second, the
surface should be checked for any physical and mag magnetic
netic defects. If there are major physical and
magnetic defects, it should be discarded and not used in formatting.
Third, a root directory is created that lists addresses of all the data on the disk. There are several
factors on which the capacity of a magnetic
magnetic disk depends. It is always desirable that maximum data
be stored in minimum possible space. So while the capacities of storages media go on increasing, the
cost goes on decreasing. It is a win--win situation for the user.
When we delete a file the data is not actually deleted but the clusters which form the file are labelled
by the system as ‘available for use’. Whenever a new file is to be written on hard/floppy disk, the
clusters used by earlier (now deleted) file would be available and those clus
clusters
ters may be used to store
new file. In such cases the old information may be over
over-written
written and you may not be able to retrieve
old file. However if you are fortunate and the cluster is not over written, the file can be ‘undeleted’
using standard procedures on Recycle Bin in Windows operating system. Such retrieval is relatively
easy to perform.

Similarly when you format a Hard Disk, it is possible to retrieve it using very special programs. Such
programs use the fact that the clusters have been merely re-formatted and information may not be
actually deleted. However, such data retrieval programs are very costly and take much more time to
retrieve data. Hence it is best to use Format command consciously and with due care.
7.2.6 Capacity of a Disk
The capacity of a disk depends on several factors, such as:
1. The number of sides used: single-sides or double-sided

2. Recording density: How close together the bits can be on a track sector of the
innermost track
3. Capacity of disks also depends on the number of tracks on the disk
7.2.7 Accessing Data
There are four steps to accessing data. There are:
• Seek
• Rotate
• Settle
• Data transfer
Total time to transfer a kilobyte:
For floppies, 175-300 ms
For hard drive, 15-80 ms
New hard drives,(jun. 2009) 0032 ms (300 MB per sec.)
Clearly, accessing data from a hard disk is much faster than that from a floppy
7.2.2 Diskette/Floppy Disk
A floppy disk, also called a floppy, diskette, or just disk, is a type of disk storage composed of a
disk of thin and flexible magnetic storage medium, sealed in a rectangular plastic enclosure lined with
fabric that removes dust particles. Floppy disks are read and written by a floppy disk drive (FDD).
Floppy disks, initially as 8-inch (200 mm) media and later in 5¼-inch (133 mm) and 3½-inch (90
mm) sizes, were a ubiquitous form of data storage and exchange from the mid-1970s into the mid-
2000s. By the late 2000s, computers were rarely manufactured with installed floppy disk drives; 3½-
inch floppy disks can be used with an external USB floppy disk drive, but USB drives for 5¼-inch, 8-
inch, and non-standard diskettes are rare to non-existent. These formats are usually handled by older
equipment.
While floppy disk drives still have some limited uses, especially with legacy industrial computer
equipment, they have been superseded by data storage methods with much greater capacity, such as
USB flash drives, flash storage cards, portable external hard disk drives, optical discs, ROM
cartridges, and storage available through computer networks.
Fig 7.04: 8-inch, 5¼-inch, and 3½-inch floppy disks
These are made of Mylar and have oxide coating over them that render the disk its magnetic
quality. The actual ‘Floppy’ is inside the diskette. Floppy disks are fast becoming redundant and most
of the new computers do not come with a floppy disk drive.
7.2.3 Other Removable Media (including non-magnetic)
Flash Memory
Flash memory is an electronic (solid-state) non-volatile computer storage medium that can be
electrically erased and reprogrammed.
Toshiba developed flash memory from EEPROM (electrically erasable programmable read-only
memory) in the early 1980s and introduced it to the market in 1984. The two main types of flash
memory are named after the NAND and NOR logic gates. The individual flash memory cells exhibit
internal characteristics similar to those of the corresponding gates.
Where EPROMs had to be completely erased before being rewritten, NAND-type flash memory
may be written and read in blocks (or pages) which are generally much smaller than the entire device.
NOR-type flash allows a single machine word (byte) to be written – to an erased location – or read
independently.
The NAND type operates primarily in memory cards, USB flash drives, solid-state drives (those
produced in 2009 or later), and similar products, for general storage and transfer of data. NAND or
NOR flash memory is also often used to store configuration data in numerous digital products, a task
previously made possible by EEPROM or battery-powered static RAM. One key disadvantage of
flash memory is that it can only endure a relatively small number of write cycles in a specific block.

Example applications of both types of flash memory include personal computers, PDAs, digital
audio players, digital cameras, mobile phones, synthesizers, video games, scientific instrumentation,
industrial robotics, and medical electronics. In addition to being non-volatile, flash memory offers
fast read access times, although not as fast as static RAM or ROM. Its mechanical shock resistance
helps explain its popularity over hard disks in portable devices, as does its high durability, ability to
withstand high pressure, temperature and immersion in water, etc.
Although flash memory is technically a type of EEPROM, the term "EEPROM" is generally used
to refer specifically to non-flash EEPROM which is erasable in small blocks, typically bytes. Because
erase cycles are slow, the large block sizes used in flash memory erasing give it a significant speed
advantage over non-flash EEPROM when writing large amounts of data. As of 2013, flash memory
costs much less than byte-programmable EEPROM and had become the dominant memory type
wherever a system required a significant amount of non-volatile solid-state storage.
USB flash drive (Pen Drive)
Fig 7.05: Flash drive (pen drive) of 4GB capacity
A USB flash drive, also variously known as a USB drive, USB stick, thumb drive, pen drive,
jump drive, disk key, disk on key, flash-drive, memory stick or USB memory,[a] is a data storage
device that includes flash memory with an integrated USB interface. USB flash drives are typically
removable and rewritable, and physically much smaller than an optical disc. Most weigh less than 30
grams (1.1 oz). Since first appearing on the market in late 2000, as with virtually all computer
memory devices, storage capacities have risen while prices have dropped. As of March 2016, flash
drives with anywhere from 8 to 256 GB are frequently sold, and less frequently 512 GB and 1 TB
units. Storage capacities as large as 2 TB are planned, with steady improvements in size and price per
capacity expected. Some allow up to 100,000 write/erase cycles, depending on the exact type of
memory chip used, and have a 10-year shelf storage time.

USB flash drives are often used for the same purposes for which floppy disks or CDs were once
used; i.e. for storage, data back-up and transfer of computer files. They are smaller, faster, have
thousands of times more capacity, and are more durable and reliable because they have no moving
parts. Additionally, they are immune to electromagnetic interference (unlike floppy disks), and are
unharmed by surface scratches (unlike CDs). Until about 2005, most desktop and laptop computers
were supplied with floppy disk drives in addition to USB ports, but floppy disk drives have become
obsolete after widespread adoption of USB ports and the larger USB drive capacity compared to the
1.44 MB 3.5-inch floppy disk.
USB flash drives use the USB mass storage device class standard, supported natively by modern
operating systems such as Windows, Linux, macOS and other Unix-like systems, as well as many
BIOS boot ROMs. USB drives with USB 2.0 support can store more data and transfer faster than
much larger optical disc drives like CD-RW or DVD-RW drives and can be read by many other
systems such as the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, DVD players, automobile entertainment systems, and in
a number of handheld devices such as smartphones and tablet computers, though the electronically
similar SD card is better suited for those devices.
A flash drive consists of a small printed circuit board carrying the circuit elements and a USB
connector, insulated electrically and protected inside a plastic, metal, or rubberised case, which can be
carried in a pocket or on a key chain, for example. The USB connector may be protected by a
removable cap or by retracting into the body of the drive, although it is not likely to be damaged if
unprotected. Most flash drives use a standard type-A USB connection allowing connection with a
port on a personal computer, but drives for other interfaces also exist. USB flash drives draw power
from the computer via the USB connection. Some devices combine the functionality of a portable
media player with USB flash storage; they require a battery only when used to play music on the go.
7.3 MAGNETIC TAPE

Magnetic tape data storage is a system for storing digital information on magnetic tape using digital
recording. Modern magnetic tape is most commonly packaged in cartridges and cassettes. The device
that performs writing or reading of data is a tape drive. Autoloaders and tape libraries automate
cartridge handling. For example, a common cassette-based format is Linear Tape-Open, which comes
in a variety of densities and is manufactured by several companies.

Fig 7.06 Quarter-Inch cartridges.
7.3.1 Types of Tape
Each type of tape storage system has its own requirements as to the size, the container type, and the
magnetic properties of the tape. Reel-to-reel tapes are used for older systems designed for networks
and cassettes are used for newer systems. Some of these, though smaller than an audio cassette, hold
more data than large reels. The magnetic properties of tapes can very even if they all look the same.
Only those tapes should be used that are compatible to the system

Fig 7.07: IBM 729V
7.3.2 Tape Formats
Medium width is the primary classification criterion for tape technologies. Half inch has historically
been the most common width of tape for high capacity data storage. Many other sizes exist and most
were developed to either have smaller packaging or higher capacity.
Recording method
Recording method is also an important way to classify tape technologies, generally falling into
two categories:

Fig 7.08: Linear
Fig 7.09: Linear serpentine.
The linear method arranges data in long parallel tracks that span the length of the tape. Multiple tape
heads simultaneously write parallel tape tracks on a single medium. This method was used in early
tape drives. It is the simplest recording method, but has the lowest data density.[citation needed]
A variation on linear technology is linear serpentine recording, which uses more tracks than tape
heads. Each head still writes one track at a time. After making a pass over the whole length of the
tape, all heads shift slightly and make another pass in the reverse direction, writing another set of
tracks. This procedure is repeated until all tracks have been read or written. By using the linear
serpentine method, the tape medium can have many more tracks than read/write heads. Compared to
simple linear recording, using the same tape length and the same number of heads, the data storage
capacity is substantially higher.[citation needed]
Scanning

Fig 7.10: Helical
Scanning recording methods write short dense tracks across the width of the tape medium, not along
the length. Tape heads are placed on a drum or disk which rapidly rotates while the relatively slowly
moving tape passes it.[citation needed]
An early method used to get a higher data rate than the prevailing linear method was transverse scan.
In this method a spinning disk, with the tape heads embedded in the outer edge, is placed
perpendicular to the path of the tape. This method is used in Ampex's DCRsi instrumentation data
recorders and the old Ampex quadruplex videotape system. Another early method was arcuate scan.
In this method, the heads are on the face of a spinning disk which is laid flat against the tape. The
path of the tape heads makes an arc.[citation needed]
Helical scan recording writes short dense tracks in a diagonal manner. This method is used by
virtually all current videotape systems and several data tape formats
7.4 OPTICAL DISCS

In computing and optical disc recording technologies, an optical disc (OD) is a flat, usually circular
disc which encodes binary data (bits) in the form of pits (binary value of 0 or off, due to lack of
reflection when read) and lands (binary value of 1 or on, due to a reflection when read) on a special
material (often aluminium ) on one of its flat surfaces. The encoding material sits atop a thicker
substrate (usually polycarbonate) which makes up the bulk of the disc and forms a dust defocusing
layer. The encoding pattern follows a continuous, spiral path covering the entire disc surface and
extending from the innermost track to the outermost track. The data is stored on the disc with a laser
or stamping machine, and can be accessed when the data path is illuminated with a laser diode in an
optical disc drive which spins the disc at speeds of about 200 to 4,000 RPM or more, depending on
the drive type, disc format, and the distance of the read head from the center of the disc (inner tracks
are read at a higher disc speed). Most optical discs exhibit a characteristic iridescence as a result of

the diffraction grating formed by its grooves. This side of the disc contains the actual data and is
typically coated with a transparent material, usually lacquer. The reverse side of an optical disc
usually has a printed label, sometimes made of paper but often printed or stamped onto the disc itself.
Unlike the 3½-inch floppy disk, most optical discs do not have an integrated protective casing and are
therefore susceptible to data transfer problems due to scratches, fingerprints, and other environmental
problems.
Fig 7.11: The bottom surface of a CD
Optical discs are usually between 7.6 and 30 cm (3 to 12 in) in diameter, with 12 cm (4.75 in) being
the most common size. A typical disc is about 1.2 mm (0.05 in) thick, while the track pitch (distance
from the center of one track to the center of the next) ranges from 1.6 µm (for CDs) to 320 nm (for
Blu-ray discs).
An optical disc is designed to support one of three recording types: read-only (e.g.: CD and CD-
ROM), recordable (write-once, e.g. CD-R), or re-recordable (rewritable, e.g. CD-RW). Write-once
optical discs commonly have an organic dye recording layer between the substrate and the reflective

layer. Rewritable discs typically contain an alloy recording layer composed of a phase change
material, most often AgInSbTe, an alloy of silver, indium, antimony, and tellurium.
Optical discs are most commonly used for storing music (e.g. for use in a CD player), video (e.g. for
use in a Blu-ray player), or data and programs for personal computers (PC). The Optical Storage
Technology Association (OSTA) promotes standardized optical storage formats. Although optical
discs are more durable than earlier audio-visual and data storage formats, they are susceptible to
environmental and daily-use damage. Libraries and archives enact optical media preservation
procedures to ensure continued usability in the computer's optical disc drive or corresponding disc
player.
For computer data backup and physical data transfer, optical discs such as CDs and DVDs are
gradually being replaced with faster, smaller solid-state devices, especially the USB flash
drive.[citation needed] This trend is expected to continue as USB flash drives continue to increase in
capacity and drop in price.[citation needed] Additionally, music purchased or shared over the Internet
has significantly reduced the number of audio CDs sold annually.
7.4.1 Similarity of Optical Disc
The various similarities of optical disks are as follows:
• Formed of layers
• Data in a spiral groove on starting from the centre of the disk.
• Digital Data (1’s and 0’s)
• 1’s and 0’s are formed according to how the disk absorbs or reflects light from a tiny laser.
The different types of optical disks use different materials and methods to absorb and reflect
light.
7.4.2 Working of Optical Disks
An optical disc is made mainly of polycarbonate (a plastic) and data is stored on a layer inside the
polycarbonate. A metal layer in it is used for reflecting the laser light to a sensor.
Laser light shines through the polycarbonate and hits the data layer making it possible to read the
data on a disk. The computer reads as a 1 or a 0 the reflection or absorption of the laser light.
The data layer is close to the top of the disc in a CD or on the label side. However, it is in the
middle of the disc in a DVD. A DVD can actually have data in two layers, that is, it can access the
data either from one side or from both sides. This way a double-sides, double-layered DVD can hold
4 times the data than a single-sided, single-layered DVD.

Fig 7.12: Comparison of various optical storage media
7.4.2.1 Materials
Different materials are used for the data (recording) and metal (reflecting) layers for different types of
optical disks, such as follows:
• CD-ROM
ROM (Audio/video, PC software)
• DVD-ROM
ROM (video/audio, PC use)
• Read Only Molded Aluminum (Also silicon, silver or gold in double
double-layered
layered DVDs)
• CD-R , DVD-R R DVD + R Recordable (once!0
• Organic dye, Silver, gold, silver alloy
• CD-RW
• DVD-RW
RW DVD + RW DVD+RAM Rewritable (write, erase, write again)
• Phase-change
• ng metal alloy film, Aluminum.
7.4.3 Read Only
The most common type of optical disk is the compact discdisc-Read Only Memory or CD-ROMROM. It is
similar to an audio CD, but its recording format is quite different. CD
CD-ROM
ROM discs are used for
computer software.
DVD was earlier known as digital video device or digital versatile device. Now, it does not really
stand for anything, and it is used for recording movies. The CDs and DVDs commonly sold belong to
the write once read many (WORM) varieties, that is, once they are produced they cannot be changed.
The polycarbonate has the data layer physically molded into it. The digital data contain pits
(depressions) and lands (surfaces) and a metal coating (usually aluminum) reflects the laser light back
to the sensor. CD-ROM and DVD-ROM ROM disks should be readable for a prolonged period of time, if
treated properly.
7.4.4 Write Once

The optical disks on a computer are CD-R, DVD-R +R discs. These are called writable or recordable
disks. There are separate metal and data layers on these type of writable CDs and the metal layer can
be gold, silver, or a silver alloy. Gold layers, through expensive, should be preferred because gold
does not corrode. The data layer that the writing laser changes is an organic dye. Once the laser
modifies the dye, it cannot be changed again. Ultraviolet light and heat can make the organic dye
degrade.
Disks have a shelf-life of 5-10 years (according to manufacturers) before they are used for
recording. As yet, it has not been verified as to how long the data will last after you record it.
For long-term storage of data, a writable disk is useful as a backup medium. It is not so efficient
for data that changes often because you must make a new recording each time you save your data.
The pricing factor is also important to decide for the use of writable disks.
7.4.5 Rewrite
An option for backup storage of changing data is rewritable disks, such as CD, RW, DVD-RW,
DVD+RW and DVD+RAM. The data layer for these disks uses a metal alloy film that can change
phases. This film can be melted by the laser’s heat to erase the marks made by the laser to record new
data. Theoretically, you can erase and write on these disks as many as 1000 times, for CD-RW, and
even 100,000 times for the DVD-RW types.
7.4.6 Advantages of Optical Disks
The following are the advantages of optical disks:
• Physical: An optical disk is much sturdier than tape or a floppy disk, it is so hard that it does
not break or melt or warp.
• Delicacy: It is not sensitive to touch and can be cleaned as well.
• Magnetic: It is entirely unaffected by magnetic fields.
• Capacity: It can hold much more data than floppy disks.
An optical disk is an efficient way to store the software and data for software providers who want
to distribute or sell.
7.4.7 Disadvantages of Optical Disks
The following are the disadvantages of optical disks.
• Cost: This is its main disadvantage. There has been a steep fall in the cost of a CD-RW drive.
So for commercial use, the read/write druvesare quite cost-effective, while for personal use,
they may not be cheap to use for data storage.
• Duplication: It is not as easy to copy an optical disk, as it is for a floppy disk. You need the
software and hardware for writing disks. (This is an advantage for commercial software
providers.) However, it is not as necessary to have extra copies since the disk is so much
sturdier than other media.

7.4.8 Care of Optical Disks (CDs and DVDs)
Though CDs and DVDs certainly store data longer than floppy disks, they do not forever. Any
sort of mishandling of the optical disk can make your data unreadable. Even fingerprints can damage
data over time.
Data loss comes from the following:
• Physical damage: breaking, melting, scratching, etc.

• Blocking of laser light by dirt, paint, ink, glue, etc.
• Corrosion of the reflecting layer.
Some do’s and don’ts for keeping your CDs and DVDs safe are as follows:
Cleaning:
• Keep it clean
• Handle by the edges or centre hole
• Put it back in its case as soon as you are finished with it. No laying it around on the
desktop
• Remove dirt and smudges with a clean cotton cloth. Do not wipe around. Wipe from the
centre to the outer edge. Wiping in a circle can create a curved scratch, which can
confuse the laser.
• For stubborn dirt, use isopropyl alcohol or methanol or CD/DVD cleaning detergent.
Labeling:
• Do not Use an adhesive label as its adhesive can corrupt data in just a few
months.
• Never write on or scratch the data side of the disk.
• Scratch the label side.
• Write on the label side with a pencil or pen.
• Write on the label side with a fine-point marker or with any solvent based marker. Use
markers for CDs (Solvent may dissolve the protective layer.)
Storage:
• Store optical disks upright on edge, just as you keep a book on shelf, in a plastic
case specially designed for this purpose. Do not store it flat for long periods.
• Store in a cool, dark and dry place.
• How you treat it:
• Keep it safe from high temperature and humidity as it can lead to corrosion.
• Protect it from ultraviolet rays of sunlight.

• Protect it from smoke and other air pollutants.
• Do not bend it.
• Do not use a disk as a coaster or a Frisbee or a bookmarker.
• Recording
• Check disk for any defect and dirt on it before recording on it.
• Open a recordable disk only just before you record on it.
• After recording, make sure the disk works as it should.
7.5 SUMMARY
• Different devices are used for data storage. The most commonly used form of
auxiliary storage involves a kind of magnetic disk.
• It comes in various sizes and stores data on a magnetic surface. Magnetic disk is
known for its high storage capacity and reliability. It also facilitates direct access to
data.
• To store data, a magnetic tape uses a method similar to that of a VCR tape. The speed
of access can be quite slow, particularly when the tape is long and what you want is
not close to the start. So this method is used basically to maintain backups of huge
data.
• In case of optical disks, an entirely different method of recording data is used that
include the various kinds of CD and DVD discs. Laser light it used in this method.
Optical disks are of various types and find applications for diverse purposes.
• Theoretically, you can erase and write on these disks as many as 1000 times, for CD-
RW and even 100,000 times for the DVD-RW types.
• An optical disk is much sturdier than tape or a floppy disk. It is so hard that it does
not break or melt or warp. It is not sensitive to touch, and can be cleaned as well.
• It is entirely by magnetic fields and can also hold much more data than floppy disks.
An optical disk is an efficient way to store the siftware and data for software
providers who want to distribute or sell.
7.6 KEY TERMS

• Cluster: A set of track sectors, ranging from two to thirty-two or more. It depends on
the formatting scheme in use.
• Cylinder: A set of matched tracks.
• Disk sector: A wedge-shaped portion of the disk.
• Hard drive: It controls the function of the hard disks that contain the data.
• Magnetic disk: It is known for its high storage capacity and reliability . It also
facilitates direct access to data.

• Slack space: The minimum space by any read or write is called a cluster. So there are
a lot of unused spaces called slack space in the cluster apart from the data stored
there.
7.7 END QUESTIONS

1. What is the main function of hard drive?
2. What are clusters?
3. Describe different types of tape.
4. What is the most common type of optical disk?
5. What are the advantages of Optical Disks?
6. What happens when a disk is formatted?
7. Write a note on different types of magnetic disks.
8. What are cylinders? Explain its features.
9. What is a magnetic tape? Explain its types and formats.
10. Discuss the Read Only Memory.
11. Explain the working of optical devices.
12. What are the disadvantages of Optical Disks?
13. Explain the method through which you can take care of optical disks.
REFERENCES
Ashar, Kanu G (1996) Magnetic Disk Technology: Media, Channel, Interfaces, and Integration,
1st edition. New Jersey: Wiley-IEEE Press.
Mee, C, and Eric Daniel. (1996). Magnetic Storage Handbook, 2nd edition. New York: MeGraw-
Hill Professional.
Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers. (2009). 2009 Optical Data
Storage Topical Meeting (Ods). NJ:IEEE.
Byers, Fred R. (2003). Care and Handling of CDs and DVDs: A Guide for Librarians and
Archivists. Gaithersburg, Maryland: National Institute of Standards and Technology.
Wikipedia (Hard disk drive, floppy disk, USB flash drive, Flash memory, Track (disk drive),
Cylinder-head-sector, Disk sector, Magnetic tape data storage, Optical Disk)

UNIT 8: INTERNET BASICS
8.0 INTRODUCTION
In this unit, you will learn about the basics of the Internet. The Internet is a world-wide network
of computers that transmit information through TCP/IP Protocol. The term ‘Internet’ in the lower
case denotes bridged networks in common, whereas the capitalized term ‘Internet’ refers to the global
network of networks that is publicly approachable and administratively uncontrolled. The Internet is
the foundation for electronic mail (e-mail), Peer-to-Peer (P2P) applications, the World Wide Web
(WWW), Voice over Internet Protocol (VOIP) and hundreds of other purposes. Although the basic
data being broadcast in each of these cases may be almost indistinguishable, each case requires
particular handling of the data regarding speed, data integrity, error correction and redundancy. The
success of the Internet is, therefore, assigned to its flexibility in rendering a programme for the
different data protocols and their individual requirements.
The antecedents of today’s Internet go back to October 1969, when ARPANET of the US
Defense Department first became online. Although this was not the first long-range computer
network, still it was the first to use packet, shifting methods to ascertain reliability, data integrity and
optimized bandwidth utilization. This was totally different to the more common circuit, switching
methods, which called for a dedicated, fixed route among two communicating computers. Until the
United States ‘National Science Foundation established their university network by January 1983, the
TCP/IP protocol was not enforced. Only after the discovery of WWW in 1991, by Tim Berners-Lee,
the Internet gained popularity in the general public. The WWW made the publication of documents
possible that could be accessed (and inter-linked) in a simple manner with no necessary of opening an
e-mail account on each machine accessed.
Nowadays, the most popular uses of the Internet are to surf the Web and e-mail communications.
Browsing the Web is done through a web browser, such as Internet Explorer of Firefox. E-mail is
accessed in one of three ways such as web-based, IMAP or POP3, POP3 and IMAP both need
consecrated e-mail clients, such as Outlook or Thunderbird. Web-based e-mail is accessed through
the WWW, needing nothing more than a web browser. For one to access the Internet, one most link
via a service (or access) provider, called an ISP. While most of the world can access the Internet via
high-speed broadband links, many places depend upon relatively slow dial-up connections. It is also
been nowadays that many new cellular phones come equipped with a web browser, and many cellular
carriers supply Internet access in the mobile phones.
In addition, you will learn about the WWW. The WWW is hypertext-based information retrieval
tool. One can easily browse the Web by alternating from one document to the other using the links in
these documents. These documents can be in various formats, such as text, graphics, animation,
sound and video. They may also be a mix of all of these. All the information on Internet is given to
the user as a document more popularly known as web page. As every house, every office, every
location has got its address, every web page on the Internet has also got its own unique address. The
address on the Internet is known as Uniform Resource Locators, (URL).
Finally, you will learn the history of the Internet and other aspects related to it , including IP
address, domain name and its types, routers, firewall, etc.
8.1 UNIT OBJECTIVES
After going through the unit, you will be able to:
• Define and explain Internet.

• Explain the various terms used in Internet
• Use several services provided by Internet.
• Connect and Explore for information over Internet
• Know about Internet services.
• Describe the World Wide Web
• Learn about universal resource locator.
• Discuss Gopher and its characteristics
• Explain the history of the Internet
8.2 INTRODUCTION TO THE INTERNET

The Internet is the global system of interconnected computer networks that use the Internet
protocol suite (TCP/IP) to link devices worldwide. It is a network of networks that consists of private,
public, academic, business, and government networks of local to global scope, linked by a broad
array of electronic, wireless, and optical networking technologies. The Internet carries an unlimited
range of information resources and services, such as the inter-linked hypertext documents and
applications of the World Wide Web (WWW), electronic mail, telephony, and file sharing.
The origins of the Internet date back to research commissioned by the United States Federal
Government in the 1960s to build robust, fault-tolerant communication via computer networks. The
linking of commercial networks and enterprises in the early 1990s marked the beginning of the
transition to the modern Internet, and generated rapid growth as institutional, personal, and mobile
computers were connected to the network. By the late 2000s, its services and technologies had been
incorporated into virtually every aspect of modern life.
Most traditional communications media, including telephony, radio, television, paper mail and
newspapers are being reshaped, redefined, or even bypassed by the Internet, giving birth to new
services such as email, Internet telephony, Internet television, online music, digital newspapers, and
video streaming websites. Newspaper, book, and other print publishing are adapting to website
technology, or are reshaped into blogging, web feeds and online news aggregators. The Internet has
enabled and accelerated new forms of personal interactions through instant messaging, Internet
forums, and social networking. Online shopping has grown exponentially both for major retailers and
small businesses and entrepreneurs, as it enables firms to extend their "brick and mortar" presence to
serve a larger market or even sell goods and services entirely online. Business-to-business and
financial services on the Internet affect supply chains across entire industries.
The Internet has no centralized governance in either technological implementation or policies for
access and usage; each constituent network sets its own policies. Only the overreaching definitions of
the two principal name spaces in the Internet, the Internet Protocol address (IP address) space and the
Domain Name System (DNS), are directed by a maintainer organization, the Internet Corporation for

Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN). The technical underpinning and standardization of the core
protocols is an activity of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), a non-profit organization of
loosely affiliated international participants that anyone may associate with by contributing technical
expertise.
Fig 8.01: Internet users per 100 population members and GDP per capita for selected countries.
There is a correlation between number of internet users and the per capita income (GDP). Rich
countries tend to have more and more internet users as the affordability of the cost of internet use
makes it suitable to more number of users. Also as number of users increase, the unit cost of internet
use also decreases.
8.2.1 Interoperable
Internet is interoperable. Interoperability is a characteristic of a product or system, whose interfaces
are completely understood, to work with other products or systems, at present or future, in either
implementation or access, without any restrictions. Thus a website developed using Windows
platform is equally accessible to a user who has Macintosh or Linux operating system installed in his
computer.
There are two ways of getting interoperable system. One way is to agree to use agreed upon
systems of interface. Thus there are protocols which all parties which use internet agree upon. This is
the philosophy of open source system. The way information is encoded and decoded is available

freely to all parties. Internet uses Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTP) and TCP/IP as protocols which
are freely and openly accessible to all parties who wish to develop browser, email client, etc. The
other way for getting interoperability is to use a broker which translates one protocol or standard to
the other so that people can work smoothly. This is similar to using a translator who would translate
say English to Marathi and back so that both kind of persons understand the other.
8.2.2 Packet Switching

Packet switching is a method of grouping data transmitted over a digital network into packets which
are composed of a header and a payload. Data in the header is used by networking hardware to direct
the packet to its destination where the payload is extracted and used by application software. Packet
switching is the dominant basis for data communications in computer networks worldwide.
In the early 1960s, American computer scientist Paul Baran developed the concept Distributed
Adaptive Message Block Switching with the goal to provide a fault-tolerant, efficient routing method
for telecommunication messages as part of a research program at the RAND Corporation, funded by
the US Department of Defense. This concept contrasted and contradicted then-established principles
of pre-allocation of network bandwidth, largely fortified by the development of telecommunications
in the Bell System. The new concept found little resonance among network implementers until the
independent work of British computer scientist Donald Davies at the National Physical Laboratory
(United Kingdom) in 1965. Davies is credited with coining the modern name packet switching and
inspiring numerous packet switching networks in the decade following, including the incorporation of
the concept in the early ARPANET in the United States
A simple definition of packet switching is:
The routing and transferring of data by means of addressed packets so that a channel is occupied
during the transmission of the packet only, and upon completion of the transmission the channel is
made available for the transfer of other traffic
Packet switching features delivery of variable bit rate data streams, realized as sequences of packets,
over a computer network which allocates transmission resources as needed using statistical
multiplexing or dynamic bandwidth allocation techniques. As they traverse network nodes, such as
switches and routers, packets are received, buffered, queued, and transmitted (stored and forwarded),
resulting in variable latency and throughput depending on the link capacity and the traffic load on the
network.
Packet switching contrasts with another principal networking paradigm, circuit switching, a method
which pre-allocates dedicated network bandwidth specifically for each communication session, each
having a constant bit rate and latency between nodes. In cases of billable services, such as cellular
communication services, circuit switching is characterized by a fee per unit of connection time, even
when no data is transferred, while packet switching may be characterized by a fee per unit of
information transmitted, such as characters, packets, or messages.
Packet mode communication may be implemented with or without intermediate forwarding nodes
(packet switches or routers). Packets are normally forwarded by intermediate network nodes
asynchronously using first-in, first-out buffering, but may be forwarded according to some scheduling
discipline for fair queuing, traffic shaping, or for differentiated or guaranteed quality of service, such
as weighted fair queuing or leaky bucket. In case of a shared physical medium (such as radio or

10BASE5), the packets may be delivered according to a multiple access scheme.
Fig 8.02: Communication between Host 1 and Host 2, with message Green,Blue, Red being
transmitted through Nodes A through H. Any path is possible: A-B-C-F-H2, A-E-H2, …, etc.
There are two significant profits from packet switching described as follows:
• The first and most crucial benefit is that since packets are short, the communication links
between the nodes are only apportioned to shifting a single message for a short period of time
when carrying each packet. Longer messages require a series of packets to be sent, but do not
require the link to be committed between the transmission of each packet. The significance is
that packets of other messages may be shipped between the packets of the message being sent
from A to D. This furnishes a much cleaner apportioning of the resources of each of the links.
• Another benefit of packet switching is called ‘pipelining’. Pipelining can be observed in
Figure 8.3. When packet 1 is sent from B to C, packet 2 is sent from A to B; packet 1 is sent
from C to D whereas packet 2 is sent from B to C, and packet 3 is sent from A to B , and it
goes on in this way. This concurrent habit of communication links constitutes a gain in
skillfulness; the total wait for transmission across a packet network may be substantially less
than for message switching inspite of the inclusion of a header in each packet rather than in
each message.
8.2.3 Data Network

A computer network or data network is a digital telecommunications network which allows nodes to
share resources. In computer networks, networked computing devices exchange data with each other
using a data link. The connections between nodes are established using either cable media or wireless
media.
Network computer devices that originate, route and terminate the data are called network nodes.
Nodes can include hosts such as personal computers, phones, servers as well as networking hardware.
Two such devices can be said to be networked together when one device is able to exchange
information with the other device, whether or not they have a direct connection to each other. In most
cases, application-specific communications protocols are layered (i.e. carried as payload) over other
more general communications protocols. This formidable collection of information technology

requires skilled network management to keep it all running reliably.
Computer networks support an enormous number of applications and services such as access to the
World Wide Web, digital video, digital audio, shared use of application and storage servers, printers,
and fax machines, and use of email and instant messaging applications as well as many others.
Computer networks differ in the transmission medium used to carry their signals, communications
protocols to organize network traffic, the network's size, topology and organizational intent. The best-
known computer network is the Internet.
8.2.4 Connecting to the Internet

There are several types of connectivity to get linked to the Internet. They can all be broadly classified
into the following categories.
Gateway access
It is also known as Level One connection. It makes possible the entry to the Internet from a network
which is not on the Internet. The entry allows two dissimilar types of networks to ‘talk’ to each other.
However, the users of the Gateway Internet generally have limited access to the Internet. They might
not be capable of using all the tools present on the Internet. The local Internet Service Provider (ISP)
normally decides this limitation.
A dependable example of network with Level One connectivity in India is provided by Videsh
Sanchar Nigam Limited (VSNL). All access to Internet from India is through the VSNL gateway.
Fig. 8.0 Gateway Access Paint for Internet
Dial-up connection
Level Two connection is also known as ‘Dial-up’ connection. This furnishes connection to the
Internet by a dial-up terminal connection. The node that provides Internet access is known as ‘Host’
and the computer that receives the service is called ‘Client’ or ‘Terminal’ (see Figure 8.5) The client
computer expends modern to access a ‘host’ and behaves as if it is a terminal directly linked to that
host. Therefore, this type of connection is also called ‘Remote Modern Access’ connection. The host
to which the client gets linked up is really connected to the Internet by a full-time connection.
Fig 8.03: Dialup modem
Dial-up Internet access is a form of Internet access that uses the facilities of the public switched
telephone network (PSTN) to establish a connection to an Internet service provider (ISP) by dialing a
telephone number on a conventional telephone line. The user's computer or router uses an attached
modem to encode and decode information into and from audio frequency signals, respectively.
In 1979, Tom Truscott and Steve Bellovin, graduate students for Duke University, would create an
early predecessor to dial-up Internet access – called the USENET. The USENET was a UNIX based
system that used a dial-up connection to transfer data through telephone modems. Dial-up Internet
has been around since the 1980s via public providers such as NSFNET-linked universities and was
first offered commercially in July 1992 by Sprint. Despite losing ground to broadband since the late-
1990s, dial-up may still be used where other forms are not available or the cost is too high, such as in
some rural or remote areas.
Fig.8.5 Host-Client Terminals

In dial-up
up link with the Internet, the hhost
ost carries all the commands that are typed on a client
machine and sends them to the Internet. It also obtains the data or information from the Internet in
place of the client and communicates it to them. The client computer behaves as a ‘dumb’ terminal
associated
ssociated to remote host. This type of connection can be divided into the following two categories:
(i) Shell connection
This type of Internet connection allows the user to acquire only textual matter of a web page.
This kind of connection does not have graphics display. However, the user will be capable of
receiving mails, browsing the Internet, do FTP, etc. Before the Inte
Internet
rnet entered into the world of
graphics and became more user friendly, shell accounts were the only sort of Internet access useable
for many years.
(ii) TCP/IP connection
Nowadays with multimedia sound and pictures, graphical internet browsers render easier access.
a
TCPIP account takes care of the disadvantage of the shell account which does not allow graphical
data to be tranmitted. You can use TCP/IP for sending and receiving both text and graphics. Hence,
comparatively, it is a more popular Internet connection.
connection. Shell accounts are slowly diminishing from
the Internet scenario in the present context.
To avail any of these dial-up

up accounts you require the following:
• Computer
• Modem
• Shell or TCP/IP account from the ISP
• Telephone connection
• Internet client software
ftware such as Internet browser
Rented or leased connection
It is also called direct Internet access or Level Three connection (see Figure 8.0). It is the guaranteed,
devoted and most valuable degree of Internet connection. With rented connection, your computer is
directly and dedicatedly linked to the Internet using high
high-speed
speed transmission cables. It presents online
linking for twenty-four
four hours day, seven days a week. Therefore, leased or rented Internet
connections are confined o large companies and universities
universities who could bear the high cost.
Fig. 8.7 Rented or Leased Connection

8.2.5 Internet Services: E-Mail, Telnet and WWW
One may ask a question as to what does one do with the Internet. Based upon the usage patterns, four
things as discussed in this section are commonly observed. They are as follows: (i) long-distance
computing, (ii) mail (iii) discussion groups and (iv) file transfers. Compared to usual postal mail,
Internet mail or electronic mail (i.e., E-mail) is much quicker. One can send program codes, files,
data, and other software as attachments and can also mail certain forms of compressed digital images.
News groups or discussion groups ease Internet user to connect together for various forms of news
sharing, debate and discussions. Long-distance computing was an actual inspiration for growth of
ARPANET and does still render a very useful service on the Internet. Programmers can preserve
accounts on distant, powerful computers and accomplish programs. File transfers service permits
Internet users to access distant machines and recover programs, data or text as per their needs.
Electronic mail (E-mail)
A paperless process of sending letters, messages or notes from one person to the other or to even
many people at the same time with the help of the Internet is termed electronic mail or e-mail. It is
very quick as compared to the normal post E-mail messages normally take only a few seconds to
reach their terminus. One can mail his/her messages at anytime of the day or night and it will surely
get instantly delivered.
You can reply in an automatic manner, put other addressees as CC or BCC reciepents. The adressees
put at BCC are not visible to those in TO or CC receivers. You can attach files. The date and time of
sending is ‘stamped’ and it cannot be easily disputed (unless there is a possibility of cyber crime).
Since emails are protected by user id and passwords, the sender cannot easily say that he has not sent
the mail, unless there is a case of hacking of email.
Although e-mail is quicker and cheaper, it has many of the parts of a regular mail. It permits you to
write a note, get the address of the recipient and mail it via the Internet. Once the mail is received and
read by a receiver, it can in turn be either forwarded, or replied to as per the need. One can even stock
it for later use or delete it. Delivery receipt and read receipt from the recipient can be requested by the
sender in an e-mail.
Features of e-mails
The following are some of the features of e-mails:
• Instant communications
• One-to-one or one-to-many communications
• Promotes informal communication
• Cheapest mail service, 24-hours a day an 7 days a week
• Physical presence of recipient is not needed
• If mail can not be served due to incorrect address or other reasons, the sender is given such
failure notices
Components of an e-mail address
As in the case of conventional mail system, an e-mail is also established upon the conception of a
recipient address. The e-mail address supplies all the information needed to get a message to the
recipient from anywhere in the world. Consider the example of the following e-mail ID:
markus@gmail.com
In the above example, ‘markus’ is the local part, which is the name of a mailbox on the terminus
computer, where finally the mail will be delivered Gmail is the mail server where the mailbox
‘markus’ exists, and .com is the type of organization on net, which is entertaining the mail server.
There are six main categories of mail servers of mail servers as follows:
• Commercial institutions or organization: com

• Educational institutions: edu
• Government site: gov
• Military site: mil
• Gateways and administrative hosts: net
• Private organizations: org
FTP (File Transfer Protocol)
We have studies FTP earlier in this course. FTP is an Internet utility software employed to upload and
download or transfer files. It gives approach to directories or folders on remote computers and
permits software, data and text files to be transmitted among different types of computers. FTP
functions on the basis of the same principle as that of the Client/Server.FTP ‘Client’ is a program
running on your computer that makes it possible for you to talk to, and get stuff from, remote
computers. The FTP client takes FTP commands and transmits them as petitions for information from
the remote computer or known as FTP servers.
The basic objectives of FTP are as follows:
• To give flexibility and push sharing of computer programs, files and data
• To transmit data faithfully and more efficiently over network.
• To promote implicit or collateral use of remote computers using Internet
• To shield a user from variances in file storage systems among hosts
The basic steps in an FTP session are as follows:
• Start up your FTP client by typing ftp on your system’s command line/’C>’ prompt (or, if
you are in a Windows, double-click on the FTP icon)
• Give the FTP client an address to link to. This is the FTP server address to which the FTP
client will get linked.
• Describe yourself to the FTP remote site by giving the login name
• Give the remote site a password
• Remote site will affirm the login name/password to allow the FTP client to access its files
• Look directory for files in FTP server
• Change directories if needed
• Set the transfer mode (optional)
• Get the file (s) you want
• Quit

Telnet (remote computing)
Telnet or remote computing is telecommunication utility software that uses available

telecommunication facility and permits you to become a user on a remote computer. Once you get
access to the remote computer, you can use it for the intended purpose. The Telnet works in a very
step by step process. The commands typed on the client computer are transmitted to the local Internet
Service Provider (ISP), and then from the remote computer that you have got access to. Most of the
ISP provides facility to Telnet into your own account from another city and checks your e-mail when
you are travelling or away on business.
The following steps are needed for a Telnet session:
• Start up the Telnet program

• Give the Telnet program an address to connect to (some really nifty Telnet packages allow
you to mix steps 1 and 2 into one simple step).
• Make a one note of what the ‘escape character’ is
• Log in to the remote computer
• Set the ‘terminal emulation’
• Play around on the remote computer
• Quit
8.3 WORLD WIDE WEB (WWW)

The World Wide Web (abbreviated WWW or the Web) is an information space where documents and
other web resources are identified by Uniform Resource Locators (URLs), interlinked by hypertext
links, and can be accessed via the Internet. English scientist Tim Berners-Lee invented the World
Wide Web in 1989. He wrote the first web browser computer program in 1990 while employed at
CERN in Switzerland. The Web browser was released outside of CERN in 1991, first to other
research institutions starting in January 1991 and to the general public on the Internet in August 1991.
The World Wide Web has been central to the development of the Information Age and is the primary
tool billions of people use to interact on the Internet. Web pages are primarily text documents
formatted and annotated with Hypertext Markup Language (HTML). In addition to formatted text,
web pages may contain images, video, audio, and software components that are rendered in the user's
web browser as coherent pages of multimedia content.
Embedded hyperlinks permit users to navigate between web pages. Multiple web pages with a
common theme, a common domain name, or both, make up a website. Website content can largely be
provided by the publisher, or interactively where users contribute content or the content depends upon
the users or their actions. Websites may be mostly informative, primarily for entertainment, or largely
for commercial, governmental, or non-governmental organisational purposes.
WWW is also normally known as the ‘Web’. The WWW is a hypertext-based information retrieval
tool. One can easily browse the Web by alternating from one document to other using the links in
those documents. These documents can be in various formats, such as text, graphics, animation,
sound and video. They may also be a mix of all of these. All the information on Internet is given to
the user as a document more popularly known as web pages. All these web pages are linked to each
other through sections within a web page. These links are known as hyperlinks.

The tool used to view these web pages on the Internet is called the Internet browser or simply
browser. It is a software program specially formulated to deduce information on user request from the
Internet and give them as a web page to the viewer. There are many browsers available in the market.
The most common among them are Internet Explorer from Microsoft and Netscape from Netscape
Inc. The procedure of using browser to view information on Internet is known as Browsing or Surfing
(see Figure 8.8).
Fig. 8.00 A Web Page on the Web
8.3.1 Universal Resource Locator (URL)

A Uniform Resource Locator (URL), colloquially termed a web address, is a reference to a web
resource that specifies its location on a computer network and a mechanism for retrieving it. A URL
is a specific type of Uniform Resource Identifier (URI), although many people use the two terms
interchangeably.[a] URLs occur most commonly to reference web pages (http), but are also used for
file transfer (ftp), email (mailto), database access (JDBC), and many other applications.
Most web browsers display the URL of a web page above the page in an address bar. A typical URL
could have the form http://www.example.com/index.html, which indicates a protocol (http), a
hostname (www.example.com), and a file name (index.html).
As each house, office location has its own address; every web page in the Internet has also got its own
unique address. This address is utilized to get the web page for users from the Internet.
Similar to the address of a house or an office (known as its postal address) the address on the
Internet is known as Uniform Resource Locator (URL). A typical Internet address or URL looks like:
http:// www.nos.org/computers/internet/url.htm
The URL indentifies a special web page among all the computers linked to the Internet. The URL
comprises the parts that determine the protocol, server and pathname of an item. We may analyze the
URL given here: (http:// www.nos.org/computers/internet/url.htm).
The protocol is followed by a colon (http:) the server is preceded by two slashes (//www.nos.org),
and each segment of the pathname is preceded by a single slash (/computers/internet/url.htm). A
protocol comprises rules that assure the computer how to recognize and translate the information at
that address
The first component –the protocol-specifies the way for translating computer information. Many
Internet pages use Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) . Other common Internet protocols that one

might come across are FTP, Usenet news groups’ protocol (NEWS) and GOPHER, an alternative
transfer protocol. The Gropher protocol is mostly outdated now.
The second component, the server (www.nos.edu), describes the computer system that stocks the
information needed and is always preceded by two slashes. A SERVER IS A COMPUTER THAT
HAS INFORMATION STORED ON IT AND SENDS IT TO THE CLIENT WHEN A REQUEST
IS MADE. Each server on the Internet has a singular address name whose text denotes to the
organization maintaining the server.
The last portion (/computers/internet/) determines the path within the server where the requested
item (url.htm) will be discovered. Most of the web pages will have .htm or.html as their secondary or
extension name.
8.3.2 Gopher: Its Origin

The Gopher protocol /ˈɡoʊfər/ is a TCP/IP application layer protocol designed for distributing,
searching, and retrieving documents over the Internet. The Gopher protocol was strongly oriented
towards a menu-document design and presented an alternative to the World Wide Web in its early
stages, but ultimately Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) became the dominant protocol. The
Gopher ecosystem is often regarded as the effective predecessor of the World Wide Web.
The protocol was invented by a team led by Mark P. McCahill at the University of Minnesota. It
offers some features not natively supported by the Web and imposes a much stronger hierarchy on
information stored on it. Its text menu interface is well-suited to computing environments that rely
heavily on remote text-oriented computer terminals, which were still common at the time of its
creation in 1991, and the simplicity of its protocol facilitated a wide variety of client
implementations. More recent Gopher revisions and graphical clients added support for multimedia.
Gopher was preferred by many network administrators for using fewer network resources than Web
services.
Gopher's hierarchical structure provided a platform for the first large-scale electronic library
connections. Gopher has been described by some enthusiasts as "faster and more efficient and so
much more organised" than today's Web services. The Gopher protocol is still in use by enthusiasts,
and although it has been almost entirely supplanted by the Web, a small population of actively
maintained servers remains. The master Gopher system was issued in late spring of 1991 by Mark
McCahill, Farhad Anklesaria, PaulLindner, Daniel Torrey, BobAlberti and Terry Nickman of the
University of Minnesota. Its fundamental goals were as follows:
• A file-like hierarchical system that would be familiar to users

• A simple syntax
• A system that can be produced rapidly and cheaply
• Extending the file system figure to admit things like searches
The origin of the name ‘Gopher’ is said to be threefold:
• Users instruct it to ‘go for’ information.

• It does so through a web of menu items analogous to gopher holes
• The sports teams of the University of Minnesota are the Golden Gophers
Gopher mixes document hierarchies with collections of services, including WAIS, the Archie
and Veronica search engines and gateways to other information systems, such as FTP and Usenet.
The universal interest in campus-wide information systems (CWISs) in higher education at

the time, and the simplicity with which a Gopher server could be set up to produce an instant
CWIS with links to the online directories and resources of other sites were the factors leading to
Gopher’s rapid acceptance. By 1992, the standard method of identifying someone’s e-mail
address was to detect their organization’s CCSO name server entry in Gopher and query the name
server.
The exponential grading of utility in social networking systems (Reed’s law) seen in Gopher
and then the Web is a common characteristic of networked hypermedia systems with distributed
authoring. In 1993-94, web pages commonly comprised large numbers of links to Gopher-
delivered resources, as the Web continued Gopher’s embrace and extend tradition of supplying
gateways to other services.
8.3.3 Stagnation of gopher

The World Wide Web was in its infancy in 1991, and Gopher services quickly became established.
By the late 1990s, Gopher had largely ceased expanding. Several factors contributed to Gopher's
stagnation:
In February 1993, the University of Minnesota announced that it would charge licensing fees for
the use of its implementation of the Gopher server. As a consequence of this, some users were
concerned that a licensing fee would also be charged for independent implementations. Users were
scared away from Gopher technology, to the advantage of the Web, of which CERN disclaimed
ownership. In September 2000, the University of Minnesota re-licensed its Gopher software under the
GNU General Public License.
Gopher client functionality was quickly duplicated by early Web browsers, such as Mosaic, which
subsumed the protocol as part of their functions.
Gopher has a more rigid structure compared to the free-form HTML of the Web. With Gopher,
every document has a defined format and type, and the typical user navigates through a single server-
defined menu system to get to a particular document. This can be quite different from the way a
typical user might traverse documents on the Web.
Gopher remains in active use by its enthusiasts, and there have been attempts to revive the use of
Gopher on modern platforms and mobile devices. One such attempt is The Overbite Project, which
hosts various browser extensions and modern clients.
8.3.4 Availability of Gopher Today

Recently, there have been attempts to renovate the use of Gopher. One such effort is the Overbite
project, a Firebox extension that adds better backup for the protocol to Firebox.
As of 2012, there were approximately 160 gopher servers indexed by Veronica-2, reflecting a slow
growth from 2007 when there were fewer than 100, although many are infrequently updated. Within
these servers Veronica indexed approximately 2.5 million unique selectors. A handful of new servers
are set up every year by hobbyists — over 50 have been set up and added to Floodgap's list since
1999. A snapshot of Gopherspace as it was in 2007 was circulated on BitTorrent and is still available.
Due to the simplicity of the Gopher protocol, setting up new servers or adding Gopher support to
browsers is often done in a tongue-in-cheek manner, principally on April Fools' Day. In November
2014 Veronica indexed 144 gopher servers, reflecting a small drop from 2012, but within these
servers Veronica indexed approximately 3 million unique selectors. In March 2016 Veronica indexed
135 gopher servers, within which it indexed approximately 4 million unique selectors. In March 2017
Veronica indexed 133 gopher servers, within which it indexed approximately 4.9 million unique
selectors.
8.3.5 Gopher Support in Web Browsers
Web browsers
Version
Browser First Last Notes
supported supported
Camino 1.0 2.1.2 Always uses port 70.
Hardcoded to port 70 from 9.0–9.2; whitelisted
Classilla 9.0 Present
ports from 9.2.1.
7.21.2
cURL (October Present cURL is a command-line file transfer utility
2010)
ELinks 0.10.0 ? Offers support as a build option
Epiphany ? 2.26.3 Disabled after switch to WebKit
Galeon ? 2.0.7
With The Overbite extension that automatically
Google
extension N/A forwards to Gopher proxies is no longer compatible
Chrome
only with Chrome.
Supported added by MS02-047 to IE 6 SP1 can be
Internet 6.0
N/A enabled in the Windows Registry. Always uses port
Explorer SP1+
70.
Internet
Explorer for ? 5.2.3 PowerPC-only
Mac
K-Meleon ? Present
With
Konqueror ? Requires kio_gopher plug-in
plug-in only
1.0c
libwww Present libwww is an API for internet applications
(December

Version
Browser First Last Notes
supported supported
1992)
Line Mode
Present
Browser
Lynx ? Present
Present(
Mosaic ?
3.0)
Built-in support dropped from Firefox 4.0
Mozilla
0.0 3.6 onwards; can be added back to Firefox < 57 with
Firefox
OverbiteFF. Always uses port 70.
Netscape
? 9.0.0.6
Navigator
NetSurf N/A N/A Under development, based on the cURL fetcher.
OmniWeb 5.9.2 Present First WebKit Browser to support Gopher
Opera N/A N/A Opera 9.0 includes a proxy capability
Pavuk is a web mirror (recursive download)
Pavuk ? Present
software program
Built-in support dropped from SeaMonkey 2.1
SeaMonkey 1.0 2.0.14 onwards. The OverbiteFF add-on provides unofficial
support to later versions.
Safari N/A N/A
Browsers that do not natively support Gopher can still access servers using one of the available
Gopher to HTTP gateways.
Gopher support was disabled in Internet Explorer versions 5.x and 6 for Windows in August
2002 by a patch meant to fix a security vulnerability in the browser's Gopher protocol handler to
reduce the attack surface which was included in IE6 SP1; however, it can be re-enabled by editing the
Windows registry. In Internet Explorer 7, Gopher support was removed on the WinINET level.
Gopher browser plug-ins
For Mozilla Firefox and SeaMonkey, OverbiteFF extends Gopher browsing and supports the
current versions of the browsers (Firefox 38 and newer, and equivalent versions of SeaMonkey).
(There is also a version of OverbiteFF available that supports Firefox 3.6 and 4 to 37, and equivalent
versions of SeaMonkey.) It includes support for accessing Gopher servers not on port 70 using a
whitelist and for CSO/ph queries, and allows versions of Firefox and SeaMonkey that do not support
Gopher natively to access Gopher servers. Plugins are also available for Konqueror, in the past a
proxy-based extension for Google Chrome was available but is no longer maintained and does not
work with the current releases.
8.3.6 Gopher Clients

Gopher clients for mobile devices

Some have suggested that the bandwidth-sparing simple interface of Gopher would be a good match
for mobile phones and personal digital assistants (PDAs), but so far, mobile adaptations of HTML
and XML and other simplified content have proven more popular. The PyGopherd server provides a
built-in WML front-end to Gopher sites served with it.
The early 2010s have seen a renewed interest in native Gopher clients for popular smartphones:
Overbite, an open source client for Android 1.5+ was released in alpha stage in 2010. PocketGopher
was also released in 2010, along with its source code, for several Java ME compatible devices.
iGopher was released in 2011 as a proprietary client for iPhone and iPad devices.
Other Gopher clients
Gopher popularity was at its height at a time when there were still many equally competing computer
architectures and operating systems. As a result, there are several Gopher clients available for Acorn
RISC OS, AmigaOS, Atari MiNT, CMS, DOS, classic Mac OS, MVS, NeXT, OS/2 Warp, most
UNIX-like operating systems, VMS, Windows 3.x, and Windows 9x. GopherVR was a client
designed for 3D visualization, and there is even a Gopher client in MOO. The majority of these
clients are hard-coded to work on TCP port 70.
8.3.7 Gopher to HTTP Gateways

Users of Web browsers that have incomplete or no support for Gopher can access content on Gopher
servers via a server gateway or proxy server that converts Gopher menus into HTML; known proxies
are the Floodgap Public Gopher proxy and Gopher Proxy. Similarly, certain server packages such as
GN and PyGopherd have built-in Gopher to HTTP interfaces. Squid Proxy software gateways any
gopher:// URL to HTTP content, enabling any browser or web agent to access gopher content easily.
8.3.8 Gopher Characteristics

Gopher functions and looks similar to a mountable read-only global network file system (and
software, such as gopherfs, is available that can actually mount a Gopher server as a FUSE resource).
At a minimum, whatever a person can execute with data files on a CD-ROM, they can do the same on
Gopher.
A Gopher system comprises of a series of hierarchical hyperlink able menus. The selection of menu
items and titles is governed by the administrator of the server. Much like a file on a web server, a file
on a Gopher server can be connected to a menu item from any other Gopher server. Many servers
take advantage of this inter-server connection to render a directory of other servers that the user can
access.
8.3.9 Technical Details and Protocol

For the first time the Gopher protocol was reported in INFORMATIONAL RFC 1436. IANA has
allotted TCP port 70 to the Gopher protocol.
telnet quux.org 70
Trying 64.85.160.193…

Connected to quux. Org.
Escape character is ‘^]’.
/Reference
1CIA world Factbook/ Archives/ mirrors / text files.com/ politics

/CIA gopher.quux.org 70
OJargen 4.2.0 /Reference /Jargon 4.2.0 gopher.quux.org 70
10nline Libraries /Reference /Online Libraries gopher.quux.org 70 +
1RFCs: Internet Standards / Computers/Standards and Specs/ RFC

gopher.quux.org 70
1U.S. Gazetteer /Reference /U.S. Gazetteer gopher.quux.org 70+
1 This file contains information on United States fake (NULL) 0
Icities, counties, and geographical areas. It has fake (NULL) 0
Ilatitute/longitude, population, land and water area. Fake (NULL) 0
Iand ZIP codes. Fake (NULL) 0
I fake (NULL) o
iTo search for a city,enter the city’s name. To search fake (NULL)
0
ifor a county, use the name plus county –for instance, fake (NULL)
0
iDallas county. Fake (NULL) 0
connection closed by foreign host.
Here, the client has instituted a TCP connection with the server, on Port 70, the standard Gopher
port. The client then transmits ‘/Reference’ followed by a carriage return followed by a line feed 9A
‘CR + LF’ SEQUENCE). This is the item selector, describing the document to be recovered. If the
item selector were an empty line, the default directory will be selected. The server then responds with
the requested item and ends the connection. According to the protocol, before the connection is shut
down, the server should send a full stop on a line by itself. However, as is the case here, not all
servers adapt to this part of the protocol and the server may close the connection without giving the
final full stop.
In this example, the item sent back is a directory, comprising of a succession of lines, each of
which accounts for an item that can be recovered. Most clients will exhibit these as hypertext links,
and so permit the user to navigate through the gopher space by following the links.
All lines in a directory listing are finished with ‘CR + LF’ and comprise of five fields: Type, User
– Name (i.e. the description text to display). Selector (i.e. a file-system pathname), and Port (i.e. the
domain name of the server on which the item resides), and Port (i.e. the port number used by that
server). The Type and User Name fields are conjoined without a space; whereas the other fields are
distinguished by tabs.
URL Links and Related Technology

Historically, to produce a link to a web server, ‘GET/’ was used as the file to imitate an HTTP client
petition. John Goerzen produced an annex to the Gopher protocol, commonly cited as ‘URL links’ ,
that permits links to any protocol that backs URLs. For example, to make a link to http://gopher
.quur,org, the item type is ‘h’, the descriltion is discretionary, the item selector is ‘URL
:http://gopher.quux,org’, and the domain and port are that of the starting Gopher server. For clients
that do not back up URL links, the server produces an HTML redirection page.
The master Gopherspace search engine is Veronica. Veronica offers a keyword search of all the
public Internet Gopher server menu titels . A Veronica search makes a menu of Gopher items, each of
which is a direct pointer to a Gopher data source. An example of the Veronica search engine is as
follows:
Gopher://hal3000.cx.1.Search%09%2B
Individual Gopher servers oftentimes use a localized Search Engine known as Jughead (renamed
Jugtail). Gopher VR is a 3D virtual reality version of the original Gopher system.
8.3.10 Gopher Server Software

A copy of every known Gopher server is permanently filed on the HAL 3000 Gopher server. The
servers may be freely transferred from the HTTP link http://hal3000.cx:70/Begin-Here/Servers
• Aftershock - written in Jave

• Bucktooth – modern gopher server written in Perl
• Geomyidae – written in C; Public domain
• GN
• GoFish
• GOPHSERV – cross-platform, GPL v3, FreeBASIC
• Gopher Cannon – Win32/Win64, freeware, written in NET 3.5
• Grumpy –Linux, GPLv3, written in FreeBASIC
• Mgod
• PyGophered- modern gopher + server written in Python
• PyGS
• Veronica – the search engine system for the Gopher protocol, an acronym for ‘Very
Rodent – Oriented Net-wide Index to Computer Archives’.

• Jugtail – an alternative search engine for the Gopher protocol. Jugtail was formerly –
known as Jughead
• Gopher + - early proposed extensions to the Gopher protocol
• Super Dimension Fortress – a non – profit organization which provides free Gopher
hosting
• Phlof – The gopher version of a weblog
• Wide area information server – a search engine whose popularity was contemporary
with Gopher
Check your progress-1

1. What is Internet?
2. What is packet switching?
3. What is a Gopher?
4. What is the use of Telnet?
5. What is the expanded form of WWW?
8.4 HISTORY OF THE INTERNET

Research into packet switching by Paul Baran and Donald Davies emerged in the early to mid-1960s,
and packet switched networks such as the NPL network, ARPANET, Tymnet, the Merit Network,
Telenet, and CYCLADES, were developed in the late 1960s and 1970s using a variety of protocols.
The ARPANET project led to the development of protocols for internetworking, by which multiple
separate networks could be joined into a single network of networks. ARPANET development began
with two network nodes which were interconnected between the Network Measurement Center at the
University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied
Science directed by Leonard Kleinrock, and the NLS system at SRI International (SRI) by Douglas
Engelbart in Menlo Park, California, on 29 October 1969. The third site was the Culler-Fried
Interactive Mathematics Center at the University of California, Santa Barbara, followed by the
University of Utah Graphics Department. In an early sign of future growth, fifteen sites were
connected to the young ARPANET by the end of 1971. These early years were documented in the
1972 film Computer Networks: The Heralds of Resource Sharing.
Early international collaborations on the ARPANET were rare. European developers were concerned
with developing the X.25 networks. Notable exceptions were the Norwegian Seismic Array
(NORSAR) in June 1973, followed in 1973 by Sweden with satellite links to the Tanum Earth Station
and Peter T. Kirstein's research group in the United Kingdom, initially at the Institute of Computer
Science, University of London and later at University College London. In December 1974, RFC 675
(Specification of Internet Transmission Control Program), by Vinton Cerf, Yogen Dalal, and Carl
Sunshine, used the term internet as a shorthand for internetworking and later RFCs repeated this use.

Access to the ARPANET was expanded in 1981 when the National Science Foundation (NSF) funded
the Computer Science Network (CSNET). In 1982, the Internet Protocol Suite (TCP/IP) was
standardized, which permitted worldwide proliferation of interconnected networks.
TCP/IP network access expanded again in 1986 when the National Science Foundation Network
(NSFNet) provided access to supercomputer sites in the United States for researchers, first at speeds
of 56 kbit/s and later at 1.5 Mbit/s and 45 Mbit/s. Commercial Internet service providers (ISPs)
emerged in the late 1980s and early 1990s. The ARPANET was decommissioned in 1990. By 1995,
the Internet was fully commercialized in the U.S. when the NSFNet was decommissioned, removing
the last restrictions on use of the Internet to carry commercial traffic. The Internet rapidly expanded
in Europe and Australia in the mid to late 1980s and to Asia in the late 1980s and early 1990s. The
beginning of dedicated transatlantic communication between the NSFNET and networks in Europe
was established with a low-speed satellite relay between Princeton University and Stockholm,
Sweden in December 1988. Although other network protocols such as UUCP had global reach well
before this time, this marked the beginning of the Internet as an intercontinental network.
Public commercial use of the Internet began in mid-1989 with the connection of MCI Mail and
Compuserve's email capabilities to the 500,000 users of the Internet. Just months later on 1 January
1990, PSInet launched an alternate Internet backbone for commercial use; one of the networks that
would grow into the commercial Internet we know today. In March 1990, the first high-speed T1 (1.5
Mbit/s) link between the NSFNET and Europe was installed between Cornell University and CERN,
allowing much more robust communications than were capable with satellites. Six months later Tim
Berners-Lee would begin writing WorldWideWeb, the first web browser after two years of lobbying
CERN management. By Christmas 1990, Berners-Lee had built all the tools necessary for a working
Web: the HyperText Transfer Protocol (HTTP) 0.9, the HyperText Markup Language (HTML), the
first Web browser (which was also a HTML editor and could access Usenet newsgroups and FTP
files), the first HTTP server software (later known as CERN httpd), the first web server, and the first
Web pages that described the project itself. In 1991 the Commercial Internet eXchange was founded,
allowing PSInet to communicate with the other commercial networks CERFnet and Alternet. Since
1995 the Internet has tremendously impacted culture and commerce, including the rise of near instant
communication by email, instant messaging, telephony (Voice over Internet Protocol or VoIP), two-
way interactive video calls, and the World Wide Web with its discussion forums, blogs, social
networking, and online shopping sites. Increasing amounts of data are transmitted at higher and
higher speeds over fiber optic networks operating at 1-Gbit/s, 10-Gbit/s, or more.
The Internet continues to grow, driven by ever greater amounts of online information and knowledge,

commerce, entertainment and social networking. During the late 1990s, it was estimated that traffic
on the public Internet grew by 100 percent per year, while the mean annual growth in the number of
Internet users was thought to be between 20% and 50%. This growth is often attributed to the lack of
central administration, which allows organic growth of the network, as well as the non-proprietary
nature of the Internet protocols, which encourages vendor interoperability and prevents any one
company from exerting too much control over the network. As of 31 March 2011, the estimated total
number of Internet users was 2.095 billion (30.2% of world population). It is estimated that in 1993
the Internet carried only 1% of the information flowing through two-way telecommunication, by 2000
this figure had grown to 51%, and by 2007 more than 97% of all telecommunicated information was
carried over the Internet.
8.4.1 IP Addresses
An IP address is an identifier or a symbol for a computer or device on a TCP/IP network. Networks
utilize the TCP/IP protocol routs messages on the basis of the IP address of the destination. The
arrangement or format of an IP address is a 32-bit numeric address composed as four numbers
distinguished by periods. Each number can be 0 to 255, for instance, 1.160.10, 240 could be an IP
address. Within an isolated network, you can attribute IP addresses at random as long as each one is
single. However, linking a private network to the Internet needs registered IP addresses (called
Internet addresses) it keeps off duplication.
The four numbers in an IP address are utilized in different ways to distinguish a specific network
and a host on that network. Four regional Internet registries- ARIN, RIPE, NCC, LACNIC and
APNIC –delegate Internet addresses from the following three classes.
• Class A- supporting 16 million hosts on each of 126 networks.

• Class B- supporting 65,000 hosts on each of 16,000 networks.
• Class C- supporting 254 hosts on each of 2 million networks.
The number of unassigned Internet addresses is running down. Therefore, a new egalitarian
system called CIDR is substituting the system on the basis of classes A, B and C, and is ties
borrowing of IPv6.
8.4.2 Domain Name

The domain name assists in finding our direction around the Internet . On the Internet, every
computer has its own address known as the ‘IP address’, IP addresses is nothing but threads of large
numbers, and it is unmanageable for a browser to recall all those numbers. Therefore, in spite of
calling back all those numbers, domain names are used. Some of the examples of domains are given
below:
• .com
• .net
• .org
• .biz
• .info
• .name, etc.

Types of domain names
Some examples of domains are; com, net, org, biz, info, name, etc. There are different types of
domain names responding to various needs and the registrations of domain are dependent on several
conditions; for example, the domains, such as the com, org, net, biz, info, etc, are unsponsored top-
level domains and their usage is open to all, whereas, the coop, museum, arrow, etc. are top-level
domains (TLDs) and are sponsored for usage within a particular community. Apart from the above-
referred domains, there also exist two letter domains, such as .in, .sg, .uk, etc, which are called
country code TLDs that correspond to a country territory or its geographical location.
8.4.3 Need to Register Your Domain Name

A domain name is one of the principal means of reaching your website through the Internet. Also, by
granting the use of unique alphabetical addresses rather than numeric ones, domain names permit
Internet users to more easily determine and transmit with websites and other server-based services,
The tractability of the domain name system permits multiple IP addresses to be attributed to a single
domain name or multiple domain names to be assigned to a single IP address. This means that one
server may have multiple roles (such as hosting multiple independent websites) or that one role can
be dispersed among many servers. One IP address can also be designated to several servers.
Duration of registration
The registrars who provide service to the needs of person/companies needing domain names can
extend initial renewal registrations in one-year increments provided that the maximum leftover
unexpired term shall not exceed ten years
8.4.4. Repeater
Network repeaters renew incoming electrical wireless or optical signals With physical media, such as
Ethernet or Wi-Fi, data transmissions can only span a limited distance before the quality of the signal
goes down. Repeaters attempt to maintain signal unity and draw out the distance over which data can
safely move.
Genuine network devices that serve as repeaters usually have some other names. Active hubs, for
example, are repeaters. Active hubs sometimes also named ‘multiport repeaters’, but more commonly
they are just ‘hube’ Other types of ‘passive hubs’ are not repeaters. In Wi-Fi, access points function
as repeaters only when operating in so-called ‘repeater mode’.
Higher-level devices in the OSI model, such as switches and routers do not integrate the
functions of a repeater. All repeaters are technically OSI physical devices.
8.4.5 Bridge
A bridge reads the outer most part of data on a data packet, to tell where the message is departing (see
Figure 8, 10 it minimizes the traffic on other network segments, since it does not send all packets.
Bridges can be programmed to reject packets from particular networks. Bridging can be programmed
to reject packets from particular network. Bridging occurs at the data- link layer of the OSI model,
which means the bridge cannot study IP addresses, but only the outermost hardware address of the
packet. In this case, the bridge can study the Ethernet data, which feeds the hardware address of the
destination address, not the IP address. Only a special bridge called a translation bridge will allow
two networks of different architectures to be linked together. Bridges do not normally permit
connection of networks with unlike architectures. The hardware address is also called the Media
Access Control (MAC) address. To decide the network segment, a MAC address belongs to the
following (or bridges use one of the following).
• Transparent bridging: They construct a table of addresses (bridging table) as they get packets.
If the address is not in the bridging table, the packet is sent on to all segments other than the
one it came from . That type of bridge is used on Ethernet networks.
• Source route bridging: The source computer furnishes path data inside the packet. This is
used on Token Ring networks.
8.4.6 Router
A router is applied to route data packets among two networks. It studies the information in each
packet to tell where it is going. If it is destined for a contiguous network, it has access to it will
denude the outer packet, readdress the packet to the proper Ethernet address and channelize it on that
network. If it is designated for another network and must be sent to another router, it will re-package
the outer packet to be obtained by the next router and send it to the next router. The section on routing
discusses the theory behind this and how routing tables are utilized to assist in finding out packet
destinations. Routing takes place at the network layer if the OSI model. They can link up networks
with different architectures, such as Token Ring and Although they can translate information at the
data link level, routers cannot translate information from one data type, such as TCP/IP in another,
susc as IPX/SPX . Routers do not mail broadest packets or corrupted packets. If the routing table does
not suggest the proper address of a packet, the packet is known away.
8.4.7 Brouter
There is a device called a router that functions like a bridge for network transport protocols that are
not will function as a router for routable protocols (see Figure 8.11) It operates at the network and
data-ink laters of the OSI network model.
Fig. 8.00Brouter
Repeaters are often used in transcontinental and submarine communication lines because the
fading or attenuation (signal loss) over such distances would be impossible without them. Repeaters

are used in both copper-wire cables containing electrical signals, and in fiber optics channeling light.
Repeaters are utilized in radio communication services. Radio repeaters often transfer and obtain
on different frequencies. A particulars subgroup of those repeaters is those used in amateur radio.
Repeaters are also used extensively in broadcasting, where they are called translators, boosters or TV
relay transmitters.
When supplying a point-to-point telecom link using radio outsight sight, one uses repeaters in a
microwave radio relay. A particular subgroup of those repeaters is those used in amateur radio.
Repeaters are also used extensively in broadcasting, where they are called translators, boosters or TV
relay transmitters.
When supplying a point-to-point telecom link using radio outsight sight, one uses repeaters in a
microwave radio relay. A reflector, often on the top of a mountain, that relays such signals around an
obstruction, is called a passive repeater or Passive Radio Link Deflection. A microwave repeater in a
communications satellite is called a transponder.
In optical communications , the term repeater is used to depict a piece of equipment that receives
an optical signal, exchanges that signal into an electrical one, renews it and then retransmits an optical
signal. Since such a device changes the optical signal into an electrical one, and then back to an
optical signal, they are often called Optical-Electrical-Optical (OEO) repeaters.
Before the invention of electronic amplifiers, mechanically coupled carbon microphones were
utilized as amplifiers in telephone repeaters. The innovation of the audio tube caused transcontinental
telephony virtual. In the 1930s, vacuum-tube repeaters using hybrid coils became commonplace,
allowing the use of thinner wires. In the 1950s negative resistivity gain devices were more popular,
ans a transistorized version called the E6 repeater was the last major type used in the Bell System
before the low cost of digital transmission made all voice band repeaters disused. Frequency-catching
repeaters were commonplace in frequency-division multiplexing systems from the middle to the late
20th century.
8.4.8 Firewall
A firewall is a component of a computer system or network that is designed to bar unauthorized
admission while allowing authorized communications (see Figure 8.12) It is a device or set of devices
set up to permit, deny, enerypt, decrypt or proxy all ( in and out) computer traffic between various
security domains on the basis of a set of rules and other criteria.
Firewalls can be enforced in either hardware or software or a combination of both. Firewalls are
oftentimes used to forbid unauthorized Internet users from accessing private networks connected to
the Internet, especially intranets. All messages entering or getting out the intranet pass through the
firewall, which probes each message and blocks those that do not meet the determined security
criteria.
There are several types if firewall techniques.
• Packet filter: It audits each packet passing through the network and accepts or rejects it on the
basis of user-defined rules. Although hard to set up, it is fairly effective and mostly
transparent to its users. In addition, it is susceptible to IP manipulation.
• Application gateway: It applies security mechanisms to particular applications, such as FTP
and Telnet servers. This is very effective but can enforce performance degradation.
• Circuit-level gateway:
way: It applies security mechanisms when a TCP or UDP connection is laid
down. Once the connection has been made, packets can flow amongst the hosts without
further checking.
• Proxy server: It bugs all messages entering and leaving the network. The proxy sserver
effectively hides the true network addresses.
Fig 8.04 A Firewall
Firewalls are mainly utilized as a means to defend an organization’s internal network from those
on the outside (Internet) (see Figure 8.13). It is used to restrain outsiders from gaining
gaining information to
secrets or from doing harm to internal computer systems. Firewalls are also used to confine the access
of individuals on the internal network to services on the Internet along with keeping track of what is
done through the firewall. Please
lease note the conflict between firewalls and routers as depicted in the
second paragraph in the IP masquerading section.
Fig. 8.00 Firewall between internet and network
Types of firewalls
The various types of firewalls are as follows:
• Packet filtering—blocks-selected
selected network packets.
• Circuit-level relay- SOCKS is an instance of this type of firewall. This type of proxy is not

cognizant of applications but just cross links your connection to another outside connection.
It can log activity , but not as detailed as an application proxy. It only works with TCP
connections, and does provide for user certification.
• Application proxy gateway – the users link up to the outside using the proxy gateway. The
proxy gets the information and brings it back to the user. The proxy can memorize everything
that is exercised. This type of proxy may need a user login to use it. Rules may be set to allow
some operations of an application to be exercised and other purposes denied. The ‘get’
function may be permitted in the FTP application, but the ‘put’ function may not.
Proxy servers can be used to execute the following functions:
• Assure outbound connections and data.

• Supervise outbound connections and data.
• Save up requested data which can step up system bandwidth functioning and decrease the
time it takes for other users to read the same data.
Application proxy servers can execute the following additional functions:
• Furnish for user certification.

• Permit and refuse application-specific functions.
• Enforce stronger authentication mechanisms to some applications.
8.4.9 Ethernet: Packet-filtering Firewalls

In a packet-filtering firewall, data is sent on the basis of a set of firewall patterns. This firewall
functions at the network layer. Packets are percolated by type, source address, destination address and
port information. These rules are similar to the routing rules explicated in an earlier section and may
be conceived of as a set of commands similar to a case assertion or if statement. This type of firewall
is quick but cannot permit access to a special user since there is no way to distinguish the user except
by using the IP address of the user’s computer, which may be an undependable method. Also the user
does not need to set up any software to use a packet-filtering firewall, such as setting a web browser
to use a proxy for access to the web. The user may be ignorant if the firewall. This means the firewall
is lucid to the client.
Circuit-level relay firewall
A circuit-level relay firewall is also lucid to the client. It takes heed on a port, such as port 80 for
HTTP requests and redirects the petition to a proxy server running on the machine. Fundamentally,
the redirect function is set up using ipchains and then the proxy filters the package at the port that
obtained the redirect.
Configuring a proxy server
The following packages are present in Linux:
• Ipchains soon to be replaced by packet filtering supported by the Linux Kernel (netfilte) . It
gets along with Linux and is used to update the Kernel packet routing tables.
• SOCKS: circuit switching firewall . Normally it does not come with Linux, but is free.

• Squid: a circuit-switching proxy. Normally comes with Linux.
• Juniper firewall toolkit- a firewall toolkit product used to construct a firewall. It uses
transparent filtering and is circuit switching. It is available as open source.
• The Firewall Toolkit (FWTK) a toolkit that comes with application level proxies. The
applications include: Telnet, Riogin. SMTP mail, FTP< http, and X windows. It can also
function as a transparent proxy for other services.
IP chains and Linux packet filtering
For detailed information on the use of IP chains and establishing a firewall, note the following
Linux How-tos:
• IPCHAINS HOW –TO

• Firewall HOW-TO
• IP-Masquerade HOW0TO
Some of the information in this section is established on these how-tos. This section summarizes
and installs simple steps- some of the items you will be requiring- to execute to establish a firewall. It
is not meant as a substitute for the Linux how-to documents, but an accompaniment to them by giving
an overview of what must be done. You may access the how-tos from one of the websites named in
the Linux websites section. The Linux Documentation project or Metaleb’s Index of Linux
publications will have copies of these how-tos.
The governance of data packet management is checked by the kermel. Therefore, to provide
backup for thinfs, such as IP masquerading , packet forwarding and port redirects, the support must
be collected inro the kernel. The kernel holds a series of tables and each tablet contain 0 or more
rules. Each table is known as a chain is a succession of rules. Each rule contains two items.
• Characteristics: Characteristics such as source address, destination address, protocol type

(UDP,TCP,ICMP) and port numbers.
• Instructions: Instructions are carried out if the rule characteristics match the data packet.
The Kernel percolates each data packet for a particular chain, for instance, when a data packet is
obtained, the ‘input’ chain rules are assured to influence the acceptance policy for the data packet.
The rules are checked beginning with the first rule (Rule1). If the rule characteristics correspond the
data packet, the linked up rule command is carried out. If they do not match, the next rule is assured.
The rules are consecutively checked, and if the end of the chain is arrived at, the default policy for the
chain is brought back.
Chains are determined by name. There are three chains that are present and cannot be erased.
They are as follows:
• Input- governs acceptance of incoming data packets.

• Forward: determines licenses to forward packets that have another host as a terminus.
• Output- permissions for sending packets.
Each rule has a branch name or policy. The policies are listed as follows:

• ACCEPT: It accepts the data packet.
• REJECT: It drops the packet but sends an ICMP message, pointing out that the packet was
refused.
• DENY: It drops and dismisses the packet.
• REDIRECT: It redirects to a local socket with input rules only even if the packet is for a
remote host. This applies to TCP or UDP packets.
• MASQ: It sets up IP masquerading. Works on TCP or UDP packets.
• RETURN: The next rule in the previous calling chain is analyzed.
You can produce more chains and then append rules to them. The commands used to alter chains are
as follows:
• -N: Create a new chain.

• -X: Delete an empty chain.
• -L: List the rules in the chain. –P: Change the policy for the chain.
• -F: Flush-Delete all the rules in a chain.
• -Z: Zero the packet and byte counters in all chains.
The commands to manipulate rules within the chain are:
• -A: Append a new rule to a chain. –I: Insert a new rule at some position in a chain. –R:
Replace a rule at some position in a chain.
• -D: Delete a rule at some position in a chain.
• Options for masquerading:
• -M with –L to list the currently masqueraded connection.
• -M with –S to set the masquerading timeout values.
• IP chain options for setting rule specifications:
• -S: Source.
• -d: Destination
• -p: Protocol=tcp, upd, icmp, all or a name from/etc/protocols.
• -j: Jump target, specifies the target of the rule. The target can be a user defined chain, but not
the one this rule is in.
• -i: Interface= Name of the interface the packet is received on or the interface where the
packet will be sent.
• -t: Mask used to modify the type of service (TOS) field in the IP header. The masks are eight
bit hexadecimal values. An example of use is ‘ipchains –an output – p: tep –d 0,0,0,0,0/0
telnet –t Ox10’. These bits are used to set priority. See the section on IP message formats.
• -f: Fragment
When making modifications to firewall rules, it is recommended to refuse all packages before making
changes with the following three commands:
• Ipchains -1 input 1 –j DENY

• Ipchains – I output I –j DENY
• Ipchains –I forward I –j DENY
These commands introduce a rule at location 1 that denies all packages for input, output, or
fotwarding. This is done in such a way that unauthorized packets are not let through while doing the

changes. When your changes have been completed, you need to take away the rules at position I with
the following commands:
• Ipchains –D input I
• ipchains –D output I
• ipchains –D forward I
Examples of the use of ipchains to permit various services:
Create a new chain:
Ipchains –N chainame
The option ‘-N’ creates the chain.
Add the chain to the input chain:
Ipchains –A input –j chainame
Allow connections to outside http servers from inside our network:
ipchains –A chainame –s 10,1,0,0/16 1024: -d 0,0,0,0/0 www –j ACCEPT
The ‘-A chainame’ contributes a rule to the chain called ‘chainame’ . The 10,1,0,0/16 1024:’
defines any traffic on network 10,1,0,0 at port 1024 or above. The ‘-d0,0,0,0/0 www’ fixes any
destination for www service (in the/etc/services file) and the ‘-j ACCEPT’ sets the rule to take over
the traffic.
Allow DNS to go through the firewall:
Ipchains A chainame –p UDP –s 0/0 dns –d 10,1,0,0/16 –j ACCEPT
The ‘-A chainame’ adds a rule to the chain called ‘chainame’. The ‘-p UDP’ assigns UDP protocol.
The ‘-s 0/0 dns’ fixes any dnx traffic from any location. The ‘-d 10, 1. 0,0/16 fixes our network and
the ‘-j ACCEPT’ sets the rule to accept the traffic. This allows DNS queries from computers inside
our network to be found.
Allow e-mail to go from our internal mail server to mail servers outside the network.
Ipchains –A chainame –s 10,1,1,24 –d 0/0 smpt –j ACCEPT
The ‘-A chainame’ adds a rule to the chain known as ‘chainame’ . The ‘-a 10,1,1,24’ fixes any
traffic from 10,1,1,24 IP address. The ‘-d 0/0 smpy’ designates any smpt type of service going
anywhere and the ‘-j ACCEPT ‘ sets the rule to accept the traffic.
Allow e-mail to come from any location to our mail server:
Ipchains –A chainame –s 0/0 smpt –d 10,1,1,24 smpt –j ACCEPT

The ‘-A chainame’ adds a rule to the chain called ‘chainame’ . The ‘-s 0/0 smpt particularizes
mail traffic from anywhere. The ‘-d 10,1,1,24 smpt’ particularizes mail traffic going to our mail
server and the ‘-j ACCEPT’ sets the rule to accept the traffic.
Perform a HTTP port redirect for a transparent proxy server:
Ipchains –A input –p tep –s 10,1,0,0/16 –d 0/0 80 –j REDIRECT 8080
The ‘-A input’ adds a rule to the input chain. The ‘-p tep’ particularizes the protocol TCP. The ‘-s
10,1,0,0/16’ sets the source as a network with netmask 255,255,0,0 . The ‘-d 0/0’ fixes a destination
of any where. The number 80 is the HTTP port number, and the command ‘-j REDIRECT 8080’
redirects the traffic to port 8080.
Give telnet transmissions a higher priority:
Ipchains –A output –p tep –d 0,0,0,0/0 telnet –t 0x01 ox 10’
The bits at the end of the line determined in hexadecimal format are used to set the precedency of
the IP message on the network.
Using ipchains-save and ipchains-restore to make rules permanent
When you have set your ipchains rules, use the procedures mentioned below while logged on as root
to make permanent:
1. Type the command ‘ipchains-save>/etc/iprules.save’.

2. Create the following script named ‘packetfw’:
3. #! /bin/sh
4. # Packet – filtering firewall script to be used turn the firewall on
5. Or off
6. If [ -f /etc/ iprules.save]
7. Then
8. Case ‘$1” in
9. Start
10. Echo –n ‘Turning on packet-filtering firewall:’
11. / sbin/ipchains-restore </etc/iprules. Save
12. Echo 1 > /proc/sys/net/ipv4/ip-forward
13. Echo.
14. ;;
15. Stop)
16. Echo’Turning off packet filtering’
17. Echo 0> /proc/sys/net/ipv4/ip-forward
18. /sbin/ipchains –X
19. /sbin/ipchains –F
20. /sbin/ipchains –P output ACCEPT

21. /sbin/ipchains –P output ACCEPT
22. /sbin/ipchains –P fprward ACCEPT
23. Echo ‘,’
24. ;;
25. *)
26. Echo ‘Usage: /etc/init.d/packetfw (star|stop)’
27. Exit 1
28. ;;
29. Esac
30. Exit 0
31. Else
32. Echo the /etc/iprules save file does not exist.
33. Exit 1
34. Fi
35. Save the file in the /etc/rc,d directory.
36. In the / etc/ rc.d/rc3.d and the / etc/rc.d/rc5,d directories make a symbolic link called
S07 packetfw to the /etc/re. d/ init,d/packetfw file with the command ‘In –s /
etc/rc.d/re3/S07 packetfw/etc/rc.d/init.d/packetfw ‘. This applies to runlevel3. Do the
same for the runlevel 5 initialization directory.
Note: You may need to use a different number than the ‘So7” string to number your link file.
Look in your/etc/rc,d/rc3,d and /etc/rc,d/ rc5,d directories to determine what number is available
to give this file. Try to give it a number just below your network number file.
8.4.10 Search Engine

The Web is so vast that attempting to find specific information by yourself would be like liking for a
needle in a haystack!
Search engines are software and hardware systems they visit websites, catalogue the words on
web pages and present links to relevant pages to people who are looking for information. The
software ‘agents’ that explore web pages and support their contents are called ‘spiders’ because they
travel all over the ‘web’. Simply itemizing words on a web page are not sufficient. When someone
undertakes a search, there may be thousands of applicable web pages. An important function of
search engines is to demonstrate the thousands of pertinent pages in some sort of legitimate order,
rated by their likely relevance to the searcher’s needs.
On this page, ‘search terms’ means the words entered into a search engine by a user.
Search engine relevance ranking methods
The following methods are used by search engines to search for a web page.
Keyword matching: Simply checks to see how many of the search terms come along on a page, e.g.,
if searching for King Henry, a page wit both the search terms would be adjudicated more applicable
than a page with only one of the terms.
Frequency: If a page cited King Henry’ in the page title or in a heading or formatted as bold would
probably be more valuable than another page that did not stress the words or position them in a
prominent place. A page having the search terms near the beginning of the text would be ranked more
highly than a page that had the search terms near the end of the text.
HTML web pages also have an inconspicuous section; the ‘dead’ where ‘METAtags’ can be
introduced by the page’s author. Two important METAtags are KEYWORDS and DESCRIPTION,
and another important head tag is TITLE. If search terms come out in these tags, it is a hint that the
words are significant to the page, and it will tend to be ranked more highly.
There is chronic conflict among the search engines to be the best search engine. Search engines
make a great deal of money through sponsorships and promotional campaigns, whereas their services
are free to users. The current king of all search engines is Google, followed up on jealously by
amateur youngsters, such as Teoma, MSN, Alltheweb, Yahoo, and a dozen others. Although they all
do the same job, they use a variety of techniques to do it.
Calculation methods of search engines
Google brought in a new conception in finding out the rank of sites: it considers the number of other
sites that link to a site. The more a site is connected to, the more classic it is likely to be. It is like a
popularity competition for websites. A much-linked-to site will be ranked more significantly in the
search results than a less popular page would be – especially if the sites containing the links are
themselves highly ranked. ‘Click-through’ popularity measures how many people themselves highly
ranked. ‘Click-through’ popularity measures how many people use those links to visit your site, how
long they visit, and how often they return.
Whether a site is included in prestigious lists, this matter is also taken care of by some search
engines. A list of sites selected by editors, i.e., DMOZ is one such example. Inclusion of a site’s name
in this list suggests the caliber of the site, and search engines like Google take this into account.
Search cheating
Many people try to find out how different search engines estimate the placements of sites in search
results. Most engines keep their formula a mystery to forbid people tapping it to get their sites’
popularity artificially expanded.
Tricks like letting in a lot of irrelevant keywords in the META tags have been popular with web
authors. A site on a brand, for example, would include irrelevant but popular keywords like ‘Pamela
Anderson, nude, porn, free’. Many search engines now pay little care to keywords for this reason.
Google dismisses them totally.
Another trick is to replicate keywords many times on a page, often with the text made
inconspicuously by adjusting the text colour to the page colour (pressing CTRL=A to select all will
display these phony words) Again, some search engines know this trick and will disregard
conspicuous mass listings . There is a warning, though: many search engines will penalize a page
that is attempting to ‘spam’ them.
Groups of partisan people attempt to find out the formula used by search engines. They set up test
pages using different types of tricks, meta tags, etc, and see how different search engines grade the

pages. By analyzing the different rankings allocated to different pages, the secret ranking formulas of
search engines can often derived. Regrettably, search engine companies often change their formulae,
and this makes it hard to produce the ‘perfect’ page.
Curiously, Google will list pages from time to time that do not have your search terms, but other
pages linked to that page with those words. Originally a fun tricks, but potentially a powerful
technique to manipulate and distort Google results, this is known as the ‘Google Bomb’.
A Google Bomb is where a lot of people connect to a site using a particular text as the link. If
sufficient pages do this, the page they connect to will show up if people search for that text in Google;
for example, If many people produced links to a Britney Spears site using the words ‘Stupid Blonde’
as the text link, anyone looking for ‘Stupid Blonde’ in Google would see the Britney Spears site
listed!.
Social significance of search engines
Although it sounds odd, it really is not. One might as well speak about the social significance of hand
tools. They are just tools, are they not?
In fact, search engines have grave moral and social responsibilities and can exert considerable
influence. Google, for instance, was forced by the Church of Scientology to get rid of links to pages
they said held copyrighted stuff. In fact, the material was on an anti-Scientology site, and taking away
the links to the pages was seen by many as the quieting of free speech. They believed a person
searching on the church would be getting a sanitized and one-sided list of links. A bit of controversy
burst, with people arguing that Google was banning the Internet. You can read more discussion of the
significances of the Google/Scientology issue, as follows:
• Can other groups use copyright law to draw other sites (e.g., sites advocating hate crimes or
selling pornography) from the Google database?
• Does taking away certain sites make a slippery slope on the way to censorship of unpopular
sites?
• Does Google have an obligation to fight censorship?
What if a search engine was arranged to promote the evaluations of sites with a special political
tendency? People would, for example, see a lot of sites at the top of the list recommending a certain
political allegiance, while pages with contrasting political thoughts would be placed way down so that
people could not see them.
The search terms inscribed by users also render a quick snapshot of people’s sentiments. Google
had an impulsive feature hat chases how often different topics are searched, for. Such information
would be priceless to newspaper reporters, advertisers, politicians, commercial organizations, etc, as
they would get a hint about what’s ‘hot’. People use indexes of search terms as indicators of fame; is
Madonna being searched for less often? Is Britney Spears on the way up or down in her career? You
can often get hints from the tendencies in search terms put forward to search engines.
Different search engines deal moral issues differently. Some reward sponsors by introducing their
link into search results irrespective of words used in the search terms. Leaving people to wonder why
‘Bob’s Hardware’ came along in the results of their search for Britney Spears, these patronized links
are not distinguished as such.
Other search engines boast of more prestigious demeanor. They only include sponsored links if
they are applicable to a search (but their rank will be unnaturally expanded) Google goes further and
keeps sponsored links different from search results, and distinctly distinguishes them as patronized.
Home page
When a web browser bugs out or when the browser’s ‘home’ button is pressed, the home page is the
URL or local file that loads mechanically. One can assign a URL for the page to be loaded and turn
this feature off and on.
The term is also employed to denote the front-page, main web page or web server directory index
of a website of an organization, group, individual or company. In some countries, such as
SouthKorea, Germany and Japan and earlier in the United States, the term ‘home page’ normally
denotes a complete website (of a company or other organization) instead of a single web page. By the
late 1990s, this usage had perished in the United States, substituted by the more comprehensive term
‘website’.
Websites that try to be a start page (more accurately a personal web portal) fall in the same class as
homepages. A start page is a website or page intended to coordinate links or information for the user
when a web browser commences. Start pages mainly comprise of data, such as games, news, weather
and other web gadgets and web appliances. Start pages also collect and manage web page links or
combine information like RSS feeds. Examples of start pages include Sthrt, Pageflakes, Google,
Netvibes and icon-based home page programme.
Portal
A web portal, also called a links page, demonstrates information from various sources in a mixed
way. Besides the standard search engine characteristics, web portals pass other services such as
information, e-mail, news, stock prices, entertainment and databases. Portals render a way for
enterprises to furnish a uniform look and feel with access control and procedures for several
applications and databases, which otherwise would have been dissimilar entities completely.
MSNBC, Yahoo!, AOL, iGoogle and Netvibes are some examples of public web portals.

What are active hubs?
Define a bridge.
What do you mean by FTP?
What is router?
What is a firewall?

8.5 SUMMARY
• Nowadays, the most popular uses of the Internet are to surf the World Wide
Web (WWW) and e-mail communications, browsing the Web is done through
a web browser, such as Internet Explorer or Firefox.
• Using Internet, Organizations all over the world can interchange data, people
can communicate with one another in a quicker and efficient way, and
researchers can assemble information in their respective field of research.
• The Web is a hypertext based information retrieval tool. One can easily
browser the Web by alternating from one document to the other using the
links in these documents. These documents can be in various formats, such as
text, graphics, animation, sound and video.
• Internet is fascinatingly regarded by some people as the world of largest
democracy with no regulatory authority, no hierarchy. It has no CEO to
control it.
• IP address is an identifier or a symbol for a computer or device on a TCP/IP
network. Networks utilize the TCP/IP protocol route messages on the basis of
the IP address of the destination.
• A domain name is one of the principal means of reaching your website
through the Internet. A bridge reads the outmost part of data on a data packet,
to tell where the message is departing; it minimizes the traffic on other
network segments, since it does not send all packets.
• A router is applied to route data packets among two networks. It studies the
information in each packet to tell where it is going.
• A firewall is a component of a computer system or network that is designed to
bar unauthorized admission while allowing authorized communications.
The Web is so vast that attempting to find specific information by yourself would
be like looking for a needle in a haystack.
8.6 KEY TERMS

• Interoperable: The power of a system or a product to work with other system or
products without particular attempt on the part of customers is called interoperability.
• Data network: An electronic communications process that allows data transmission
and reception of data (e.g. spreadsheets, letters, and other types of documents)
• FTP: Internet utility software employed to upload and download or transfer files.
• Telnet or distant computing: telecommunication utility software that uses available
telecommunication facility and permits you to become a user on a remote computer.
• Active hubs: These are a type of genuine network devices, sometimes also named
‘multiport repeaters’ but more commonly they are just hubs.

• Gopher protocol: A TCP/IP application layer protocol planned for distributing,
searching and retrieving documents over the Internet and was a predecessor to the
Web.
• Router: It is applied to route data packets among two networks. It studies the
information in each packet to tell where it is going.
• Firewall: A firewall is a component of a computer system or network that is designed
to bar unauthorized admission while allowing authorized communications.
• WWW: Also normally known as ‘the Web’ it is hypertext-based information retrieval
tool. One can easily browse the Web by alternating from one document to the other
using the links in those documents.
8.7 END QUESTIONS

1. What is interoperability?
2. What is packet switching?
3. How does data network work?
4. What are the basic objectives of FTP?
5. What is the difference between leased connection and dial-up connection?
6. Write short notes on the following :
(a) TCP/IP connection
(b) Telnet
(c) Gateway access
(d) Shell connection
(e) E-mail
7. What is WWW? Explain its functions.
8. How can you connect to the Internet? Explain dial-up connection.
9. Explain the working of the TCP/IP connection.
10. What is a URL? How does it work?
8.8 REFERENCES
Barksdale, Karl, M Rutter and M Teeter. (2001). Internet Basics. Florence, KY:
Course Technology.
Keller Rohle, Stephanie. (2004). Computer and Internet Basics Step-by-Step. West
Conshohocken, PA: Infinity Publishing.
Fawcett, Shaun. (2007). Internet Basics for Beginners – How to Send E-Mails and Surf the Net
withEase (Book Description). Calabasas, CA: Final Draft Inc.
Wikipedia, (internet, Computer network, Packet switching, WWW, URL, gopher (protocol)

UNIT 9: THE STUDY OF THE INTERNET
9.0 INTRODUCTION
In this unit, you will learn about the Internet has taken the entire world by storm with its up to date
technology to unite people and computers all over world. Through the Internet, organization all over
the world can interchange data; people can efficiently communicate with one another in a quicker
way; and researchers can gather information in their respective fields of research. Moreover, using the
videoconferencing facility through the Internet, it has become possible that people can even see each
other when communicating. Even one can do all his/her shopping sitting at home.
In addition, you will learn about other aspects if the Internet, such as web directories, working of
web directories, searching and finding web directories. This unit will also discuss the basics of search
engines and different search engines. Alta Vista which is one of the oldest search engines will also be
explained, and so will be Excite, Hotbot and Lycos. Further, you will learn about web crawler. A web
crawler is a computer program that surfs the web in an organized and automotive mode. This unit also
covers meta-search engines, portals and its types, snap. Com and its characteristics, and so on, finally,
this unit will also give you tips to be Net savvy, so that you may be able to effectively search on the
Internet.
9.1 UNIT OBJECTIVES

• Elaborate on web directories

• Explain the basics of search engines.
• Discuss Alta-Vista- the oldest search engine
• Describes Excite, Hotbol and lycos
• Describe the concept of web crawler
• Explain portals and its different types
• Describe snap.com
• Explain search strategies
• Elaborate on how to use wild card when searching on the Net
• Explain the evaluation of information sources
9.2 WEB DIRECTORIES

A web directory or link directory is an online list or catalog of websites. That is, it is a directory
on the World Wide Web of (all or part of) the World Wide Web. Historically, directories typically
listed entries on people or businesses, and their contact information; such directories are still in use
today. A web directory includes entries about websites, including links to those websites, organized
into categories and subcategories. Besides a link, each entry may include the title of the website, and
a description of its contents. In most web directories, the entries are about whole websites, rather than
individual pages within them (called "deep links"). Websites are often limited to inclusion in only a

few categories.
There are two ways to find information on the Web: by searching or browsing. Web directories
provide links in a structured list to make browsing easier. Many web directories combine searching
and browsing by providing a search engine to search the directory. Unlike search engines, which base
results on a database of entries gathered automatically by web crawler, most web directories are built
manually by human editors. Many web directories allow site owners to submit their site for inclusion,
and have editors review submissions for fitness.
Web directories may be general in scope, or limited to particular subjects or fields. Entries may
be listed for free, or by paid submission (meaning the site owner must pay to have his or her website
listed).
RSS directories are similar to web directories, but contain collections of RSS feeds, instead of
links to web sites.
9.2.1 Range of Listing

Most of the directories are general in scope and list websites across a wide range of categories,
regions and languages. But some niche directories focus on restricted regions, single languages, or
specialist sectors. One type of niche directory with a large number of sites in existence is the
shopping directory. Shopping directories specialize in the listing of retail e-commerce sites.
Examples of well-known general web directories are Yahoo! Directory (shut down at the end of
2014) and DMOZ (shut down on March 14, 2017). DMOZ was significant due to its extensive
categorization and large number of listings and its free availability for use by other directories and
search engines.
However, a debate over the quality of directories and databases still continues, as search engines
use ODP's content without real integration, and some experiment using clustering.
Directories have several characteristics in listing often counting upon the price paid for inclusion
as follows:
• Multiplicative inverse link-a link back to the directory must be added somewhere on the
submitted site to get listed in the directory.
• Invite for position – where sites are arranged on the basis of bids.
• Complimentary submission- there is no charge for the listing of the site and review.
• Paid-up submission – A one-time or repeating fee is billed for reviewing listing the submitted
link.
• Affiliate Links- where the directory makes commission for referred customers from the listed
websites.
• No follow- there is a rel-“no follow” assign linked with the link, meaning search engines will
contribute no weight to the link.
• Featured listing- the link is assigned a premium place in a category (or multiple categories) or
other sections of the directory, such as the home page. Sometimes called sponsored listing.
9.2.2 Human-Edited Directories

A human-edited directory is created and maintained by editors who add links based on the policies
particular to that directory. Human-edited directories are often targeted by SEOs on the basis that
links from reputable sources will improve rankings in the major search engines. Some directories may
prevent search engines from rating a displayed link by using redirects, nofollow attributes, or other
techniques. Many human-edited directories, including DMOZ, World Wide Web Virtual Library,
JoeAnt, Business.com and Jasmine Directory, are edited by volunteers, who are often experts in
particular categories. These directories are sometimes criticized due to long delays in approving
submissions, or for rigid organizational structures and disputes among volunteer editors.
In response to these criticisms, some volunteer-edited directories have adopted wiki technology, to
allow broader community participation in editing the directory (at the risk of introducing lower-
quality, less objective entries).
Another direction taken by some web directories is the paid for inclusion model. This method enables
the directory to offer timely inclusion for submissions and generally fewer listings as a result of the
paid model. They often offer additional listing options to further enhance listings, including features
listings and additional links to inner pages of the listed website. These options typically have an
additional fee associated but offer significant help and visibility to sites and/or their inside pages.
Today submission of websites to web directories is considered a common SEO (search engine
optimization) technique to get back-links for the submitted website. One distinctive feature of
'directory submission' is that it cannot be fully automated like search engine submissions. Manual
directory submission is a tedious and time-consuming job and is often outsourced by webmasters.
9.2.3 Bid for Position Directories

Bid for Position directories, also known as bidding web directories, are paid-for-inclusion web
directories where the listings of websites in the directory are ordered according to their bid amount.
They are special in that the more a person pays, the higher up the list of websites in the directory they
go. With the higher listing, the website becomes more visible and increases the chances that visitors
who browse the directory will click on the listing. For the management of ‘bid for position
directories’ that include phpLinkBid (paid), Link Bid Script (free). Astanda Directory Project (ADP)
and modified link bid version for phpLD (phpLink Directory) , there are PHP scripts (both paid and
free versions) .
9.2.4 Automated Submission of Web Directories

In the automated of web directories, moderation or human editing is substituted with the automatized
processing that requires particular proficiencies for the website subject filtering and categorization.
This is same as document categorization which is one of the application programmers of machine
learning proficiencies.
9.2.5 Working of a Web Directory

If you want your site to be found on the Internet, very few people would debate the wisdom of
submitting it to Google or DMOZ. It obviously makes sense to be listed on the premier search engine
and in the top directory. But what about all those other directories and engines out there? Is it
worthwhile being listed, and if so, is it better to make your submission manually or use an automated
software tool? This article will examine these questions and in the process try to determine what to
look for if you decide to use an automated tool for submission.
Some search engines and directories make it virtually impossible to be included except by manual
submission. The two best examples are perhaps Google and DMOZ. While no sites actually seem to
encourage automated submission, it is certainly actively discouraged at a number of sites. This does
not mean that there is something inherently wrong with automated submission. After all it’s just an
easy way to fill out a form. While Google does not allow automated submissions, they implicitly
admit the legitimacy of doing so by providing an “autofill” button on their plug-in toolbar.
The aversion to automated submissions has varied causes but some obvious reasons can be identified.
Automated submissions can lead to server overload and vulnerability to denial of service attacks.
Inappropriate submissions, for example submitting a general interest URL to a specialty engine, can
happen much more easily when submission is automated. Finally, manually maintained directories
are particularly sensitive to inappropriate categorisation and trivial requests for inclusion. For them
manual submissions separate the wheat from the chaff.
If we accept that automated submissions are legitimate, the question still remains as to whether it is
worthwhile. Even with the recent changes at Yahoo, the dominance of Google tends to overshadow
all other search engine. While estimates of Google’s importance vary, a significant number of
searches do originate with other engines. Certainly there can be no denying the usefulness of
specialized search engines.
Guidelines for Automated Submission
With these issues aside, let’s get to the heart of the matter. Automated submissions can be done in a
couple of ways. You can purchase a software package or find a website that performs this function.
We are primarily concerned with the former since this has more appeal for the web developer because
it provides an inexpensive way of making multiple submissions for different sites. These packages
may be dedicated engine-submission tools or part of an integrated suite of Search Engine
Optimisation (SEO) tools. What I propose to do here is develop some general guidelines to help you
determine what to look for if you are in the market for this kind of software.
User Friendly Interface
While it is a truism to say that a user-friendly interface is important, it is especially critical for
automated submission software because this is a task that the user can choose to do manually. Most
people won’t use an automated tool if significant savings in time are not immediately evident and if
using software is more confusing than doing it manually.
On the other hand, if the software allows you to set up your site and begin submissions very quickly,
then it probably will not do a good job for you. Different engines/directories have different
requirements from the most basic that want only an URL, to those that want a very specialised
category selection. In particular, submissions for directories require careful choices regarding
categories and subcategories. When setting up a site for automated submission be prepared for a fair
bit of data entry. Automation can relieve some of the tedium involved, but proper set-up will still
require patience.
Organization

In order to be really useful, engines and directories need to be sorted in a variety of ways. First off,
engines should be categorized according to their status. Certainly major and minor engines should be
distinguished.
While there are various ways of categorizing information, it is important that the user have enough
information to make a sensible judgment about whether or not to submit to a specific engine. For
instance, in some cases you will find the “Femina” Engine listed as a general search engine. By their
own definition Femina consider themselves a specialized site. Submitting a general site to this engine
is probably a waste of time for all concerned.
Submissions should probably also be sorted by both country and language. Some packages seem
fairly sloppy in this regard. It is not very helpful when a site such as “Canadopedia” is designated as
a U.S. site especially when it is self-described as “made in Canada by Canadians for all Canadians”.
Good organization will also help you keep track of your submissions and thus avoid multiple
submissions to the same site. Some sites will assume you are spamming them if you submit more than
once, and you could end up achieving the exact opposite of what you intend.
In any case, I think we can conclude that the better organized and the more information that a
software tool supplies the more useful it is to the web developer.
Beware of claims such as, “We’ll submit your website to 1000+ major search engines”. At best this
statement is misleading. There aren’t a thousand major search engines out there.
You should check out some of the engines listed for automated submission especially if the software
does not provide a link directly to an engine’s site. It was with this in mind that I tried to locate a
search engine called “Pete’s Internet Links”. A search on Google turns up over ten pages of sites with
references to this “engine” but the engine itself is nowhere to be found. Perhaps it once existed but
there’s no reason for it to appear in current versions of autosubmission software other than to bloat
numbers and mislead buyers. Where extravagant claims are made about the number of engines
submitted to, further investigation will doubtless turn up other “vapour engines”.
For this reason an active link to the home page of an engine is a must-have feature of any submission
software. Clicking the link should open the search engine page in your default browser or within the
software itself. This will help verify the nature and existence of the site.
Another way of assessing the engines you are submitting to is by checking their popularity. To form
some idea of the ranking of different search engines go to http://www.freewebsubmission.com.
You’ll find a listing of search engines and directories ranked by their popularity on Alexa’s engine.
Alternately, you can go to the Alexa site itself and check out their ranking of different sites. You will
have to sort out the information for yourself though. For instance, directories and engines are not
listed together.
And, yes, cozycabin.com does exist, but have a look at the site before you decide to make a
submission.
Confirmation and Updates

In view of what has been said above, it is important to ask “What kind of confirmation do you get
when you make a submission to a site?” Does the software show you the page returned by the engine
when a successful submission has been made? If not you might quite rightly be suspicious that your
page has not been properly submitted or that you’ve made a submission to a “vapour engine”.
For an individual who is doing a one-time submission of his site to search engines, updates are not a
major issue. For the web developer who makes submissions on a regular basis for different clients, it
is quite a different matter. We all know how frequently websites change, so if you are purchasing
software it is important to know how frequently the database is updated and how long the updates are
supplied for free.
The situation is analogous to using anti-virus software. It doesn’t matter how good the anti-virus
software is if the virus database is outdated. Changes to the database of engines may become
necessary for a variety of reasons but primarily because of changes to submission requirements. Most
packages allow you to download updates as they become available, again in much the same way as
you would update a virus definition file. The better software packages will inform you of the changes
made.
Most software packages will allow you to print a report of submissions made. Forwarding this
information to your clients is good customer relations but only if the information is reliable and up-to-
date.
A Word of Caution
As a result of automated submissions you will doubtless receive some unwanted email. I won’t dwell
on the irony of this situation other than to say “He who lives by the sword…”
As part of the submission process, many sites require a valid email address. In some cases, a site will
not be added if there is no response to a confirming email. An awkward situation can develop if you
are adding a listing on behalf of a client and this client starts receiving spam. One solution is to set up
a temporary email address that is used for the short term or an address that redirects emails to one of
your own accounts. In this way legitimate confirmations can be handled and spam need not reach
your client.
Conclusion
For individuals trying to promote their own websites, manual submission might well be the best
option. Specialty engines can be identified and categorization can be carefully tailored so that one’s
site appears exactly where it ought to in a directory. For exactly the same reasons, submission for any
specialty website might best be handled by manual submission.
On the other hand, for the web professional regularly making submissions on behalf of clients, an
automated tool is an invaluable assistant. Submissions can be made quickly and be automatically
documented. However, careful choice of software is very important.
Look for submission software that documents engines, provides information about them and links to
them. Look for software that is regularly updated and that removes engines as well as adds them. Any
submission should show the confirmation page generated by a successful submission. Do not look at
total number of engines as a sign of quality software. In fact, beware extravagant claims about
number of engines – these probably include “vapour engines”.
Submission software should carefully document what submissions have been made and to what sites.
In this way you can avoid making multiple submissions. This is something that some sites will
interpret as spamming and they will penalise you for it. You need to protect your own and your
clients’ interests and not achieve the opposite to your desired effect.
Many companies provide free trial or “lite” versions of submission software often as part of an
integrated suite of tools. To locate these packages check the DMOZ listing under the category,
“Computers: Software: Internet: Website Promotion”. After all, any company in the Search Engine
business should be listed here!
Test drive these packages carefully and you’ll be able to make the right purchasing decision.
A web directory websites by subject and this is usually done by humans and not any software. The
searcher looks at sites prepared in a series of menus and categories. As the sites are searched by
human eyes, web directories are usually much smaller than the databases search engines. In other to
be in a web directory’s listings, there are two means for sites; either the directory’s editor(s) will
eventually encounter that site or the site owner can forward the site to the web directory.
Searching and Finding a Web Directory
• With applicable data from its index, the web directory shows up to the searcher’s queries.
• The searcher searchers the web directory’s indexed categories or scribes a question into the
web directory.
• In addition to its own search engine itemizations, Yahoo has one of the best web directories
on the Web, along with many other search services.
• Particularly with its recent foray into vertical search channels. Look Smart is difficult to
assort as just a web directory.
• The ODP is an edited directory and has been around since 1999. Also known as DMOZ
(Directory Mozilla) , the ODP proposes to be the ‘largest on the Web’ , preserved and
manufactured by a ‘vast, world-wide community of volunteer editors.
9.3 SEARCH ENGINES BASICS

A web search engine is a software system that is designed to search for information on the World
Wide Web. The search results are generally presented in a line of results often referred to as search
engine results pages (SERPs). The information may be a mix of web pages, images, and other types
of files. Some search engines also mine data available in databases or open directories. Unlike web
directories, which are maintained only by human editors, search engines also maintain real-time
information by running an algorithm on a web crawler.
The following are the basic tips for using search engines:
• Use some time in going along alterations and enhancements and getting to know their
particular strengths.

• You will not only improve your short-term results, but you will became a more advanced and
skilled researcher in the procedure.
• Search engines are not the only way to find information online, but they are the most
commonly known and a default starting point.
• Most search sites include detailed documentation (often through a link called search tips,
custom search or advanced searching) .
• As a special case; searches by author, subject, newsgroup or creation date.
• Searches multiple engines at a time; results reckon on features of individual ones limited.
9.3.1 Different Search Engines

Following is the timeline of various search engines developed so far (till 2017)
Timeline (full list)

Year Engine Current status
W3Catalog Inactive
Aliweb Inactive
1993
JumpStation Inactive
WWW Worm Inactive
WebCrawler Active, Aggregator
Go.com Inactive, redirects to Disney
1994
Lycos Active
Infoseek Inactive, redirects to Disney
AltaVista Inactive, redirected to Yahoo!
Daum Active
Magellan Inactive
1995
Excite Active
SAPO Active
Yahoo! Active, Launched as a directory
Dogpile Active, Aggregator
Inktomi Inactive, acquired by Yahoo!
1996
HotBot Active (lycos.com)
Ask Jeeves Active (rebranded ask.com)
Northern Light Inactive
1997
Yandex Active
Google Active
Ixquick Active also as Startpage
1998
MSN Search Active as Bing
empas Inactive (merged with NATE)
1999 AlltheWeb Inactive (URL redirected to Yahoo!)

GenieKnows Active, rebranded Yellowee.com
Naver Active
Teoma Inactive, redirects to Ask.com
Vivisimo Inactive
Baidu Active
2000 Exalead Active
Gigablast Active
2001 Kartoo Inactive
Info.com Active
2003
Scroogle Inactive
Active, Launched own web search
Yahoo! Search
(see Yahoo! Directory, 1995)
2004
A9.com Inactive
Sogou Active
AOL Search Active
2005 GoodSearch Active
SearchMe Inactive
Soso Inactive, redirects to Sogou
Quaero Inactive
Search.com Active
2006 ChaCha Inactive
Ask.com Active
Active as Bing, Launched as
Live Search
rebranded MSN Search
wikiseek Inactive
Sproose Inactive
2007
Wikia Search Inactive
Blackle.com Active, Google Search
Powerset Inactive (redirects to Bing)
Picollator Inactive
Viewzi Inactive
2008 Boogami Inactive
LeapFish Inactive
Forestle Inactive (redirects to Ecosia)
DuckDuckGo Active
Active, Launched as
Bing
2009 rebranded Live Search
Yebol Inactive

Mugurdy Inactive due to a lack of funding
Scout (Goby) Active
NATE Active
Blekko Inactive, sold to IBM
2010 Cuil Inactive
Yandex (English) Active
2011 YaCy Active, P2P web search engine
2012 Volunia Inactive
Qwant Active
2013 Coc Coc Active, Vietnamese search engine
Egerin Active, Kurdish / Sorani search engine
2015 Cliqz Active, Browser integrated search engine
Let us discuss some of these.
HotBot is a metasearch engine for information on the world wide web. Hotbot was launched in
May 1996 by Wired magazine. It became a popular tool with search results served by the Inktomi
database and directory results provided originally by LookSmart and then DMOZ since mid-1999.
Hotbot also used search data from Direct Hit for a period, which was a tool that used click-through
data to manipulate results. It was launched using a "new links" strategy of marketing, claiming to
update its search database more often than its competitors. It also offered free webpage hosting, but
only for a short time, and it was taken down without any notice to its users. It was one of the first
search engines to offer the ability to search within search results.
Lycos acquired HotBot as part of its acquisition of Wired in 1998 and thereafter HotBot
languished with limited development and falling market share. At the end of 2002 HotBot was
relaunched as a multiple option search tool, giving users the option to search either the FAST,
Google, Inktomi or Teoma databases.
Up to 2011, the HotBot website was merely a front end for three third-party search engines
(Yahoo.com, MSN, and lyGo.com). In July 2011, HotBot was relaunched with a new robot-like
mascot, a new logo, and a modern site design. In the beta, HotBot became a portal, returning not just
web search results, but also searches from various Lycos websites, such as News, Shopping and
Weather Zombie. The portal interface lasted for roughly six months, and these features were instead
reincorporated into the 2012 Lycos website redesign, returning HotBot to a simplified search
interface. In October 2016, Lycos sold the Hotbot.com domain name for $155,000 to an unnamed
buyer.

Excite (stylized as excite) is a collection of web sites and services, launched in December 1995.
Excite is an online service offering a variety of content, including an Internet portal showing news
and weather etc. (outside United States only), a metasearch engine, a web-based email, instant
messaging, stock quotes, and a customizable user homepage. The content is collated from over 100
different sources.
Excite's portal and services are owned by Excite Networks, but in the United States, Excite is a
personal portal, called My Excite, which is operated by Mindspark and owned by IAC Search and
Media. In the 1990s, Excite was one of the most recognized brands on the Internet, before its decline
in the early 2000s.
Excites’ main effectiveness is its concept searching. Not only will it accept the accurate words or
phrases you inscribe, but its effective features enable it to distinguish in related ideas and terms as
well. If ‘Hawaii’ and vacation’ terms are keyed in, Excite knows how to search for ‘travel, ‘holiday’,
and ‘tourism’ in addition to the names of each Hawaiian island. The proficiency of this machine is
especially cooperative when you are looking for a concept that is hard to determine or that can be
depicted in many different ways.
Ranging from Health to Lifestyles to Polities , Excite’s approach to indexing necessitates

fourteen or so ‘channels’ with more particular subheadings under each one. Many of the listed sites
contain recapitulations and evaluations by Excite’s editorial team.
Lycos, Inc., is a web search engine and web portal established in 1994, spun out of Carnegie
Mellon University. Lycos also encompasses a network of email, webhosting, social networking, and
entertainment websites.
Lycos is a university spin-off that began as a research project by Michael Loren Mauldin of
Carnegie Mellon University's main Pittsburgh campus in 1994. Lycos Inc. was formed with
approximately US $2 million in venture capital funding from CMGI. Bob Davis became the CEO and
first employee of the new company in 1995, and concentrated on building the company into an
advertising-supported web portal. Lycos enjoyed several years of growth during the 1990s and
became the most visited online destination in the world in 1999, with a global presence in more than
40 countries.
In 1996, the company completed the fastest initial public offering from inception to offering in
NASDAQ history. In 1997, it became one of the first profitable internet businesses in the world. In
1998, Lycos paid $58 million for Tripod.com in an attempt to "break into the portal market." Over the

course of the next few years, Lycos acquired nearly two dozen internet brands including Gamesville,
WhoWhere, Wired News (eventually sold to Wired), Quote.com, Angelfire, Matchmaker.com, and
RagingBull.com.
Lycos Europe was a joint venture between Lycos and the Bertelsmann transnational media
corporation, but it has always been a distinct corporate entity. Although Lycos Europe remains the
largest of Lycos's overseas ventures, several other Lycos subsidiaries also entered into joint venture
agreements including Lycos Canada, Lycos Korea and Lycos Asia.
Near the peak of the internet bubble on May 16, 2000, Lycos announced its intent to be acquired
by Terra Networks, the internet arm of the Spanish telecommunications giant Telefónica, for $12.5
billion. The acquisition price represented a return of nearly 3000 times the company's initial venture
capital investment and about 20 times its initial public offering valuation. The transaction closed in
October 2000 and the merged company was renamed Terra Lycos, although the Lycos brand
continued to be used in the United States. Overseas, the company continued to be known as Terra
Networks.
On August 2, 2004, Terra announced that it was selling Lycos to Seoul, South Korea-based
Daum Communications Corporation, now Kakao, for $95.4 million in cash, less than 2% of Terra's
initial multibillion-dollar investment. In October 2004, the transaction closed for sale of half of the
business and the company name was changed back to Lycos Inc. The remaining Terra half was
reacquired by Telefónica.
Under new ownership, Lycos began to refocus its strategy. In 2005, the company moved away
from a search-centric portal and toward a community destination for broadband entertainment
content. With a new management team in place, Lycos also began divesting properties that were not
core to its new strategy. In July 2006, Wired News, which had been part of Lycos since the purchase
of Wired Digital in 1998, was sold to Condé Nast Publications and re-merged with Wired Magazine.
The Lycos Finance division, best known for Quote.com and RagingBull.com, was sold to FT
Interactive Data Corporation in February 2006, while its online dating site, Matchmaker.com, was
sold to Date.com. In 2006, Lycos regained ownership of the Lycos trademark from Carnegie Mellon
University.
During 2006, Lycos introduced several media services, including Lycos Phone which combined
video chat, real-time video on demand, and an MP3 player. In November 2006, Lycos began to roll
out applications centered on social media, including its video application, Lycos Cinema, that
featured simultaneous watch and chat functionality. In February 2007, Lycos MIX was launched,
allowing users to pull video clips from YouTube, Google Video, Yahoo! Video and MySpace Video.
Lycos MIX also allowed users to create playlists where other users could add video comments and
chat in real-time.
As part of a corporate restructuring to focus on mobile, social networks and location-based

services, Daum sold Lycos for $36 million in August 2010 to Ybrant Digital, an internet marketing
company based in Hyderabad, India.
In May 2012 Lycos announced the appointment of former employee Rob Balazy as CEO.
Due to a disagreement over the price of Lycos, Daum and Ybrant went to court, which backed
Daum's claims. This prompted Daum in 2016 to seize Lycos's shares back from Ybrant.

Lycos, Inc.; currently according to Bost
Boston
on Better Business Bureau holds & has maintained an "F"
rating due to large numbers of customer complaints and Lycos, Inc. failure to respond to customer
complaints, as well as fraudulent use of the BBB's logo on Tripod's payment page. Lycos, Angelfire
and Tripod are not accredited by the Better Business Bureau as they claimed and is substantiated by
the Better Business Bureau on Lycos' company listing.
Yahoo! Search is a web search engine owned by Yahoo, headquartered in Sunnyvale, California.
As of February
uary 2015 it is the third largest search engine in the US by the query volume at 12.8%,
after its competitors Google at 64.5% and Bing at 19.8%.
Originally, "Yahoo Search" referred to a Yahoo-provided

Yahoo provided interface that sent queries to a
searchable index of pages
ges supplemented with its directory of websites. The results were presented to
the user under the Yahoo! brand. Originally, none of the actual web crawling and data housing was
done by Yahoo! itself. In 2001, the searchable index was powered by Inktomi and later was powered
by Google until 2004, when Yahoo! Search became independent. On July 29, 2009, Microsoft and
Yahoo! announced a deal in which Bing would henceforth power Yahoo! Search.
Yahoo Search indexed and cached the common HTML page formats, as well well as several of the
more popular file-types,
types, such as PDF, Excel spreadsheets, PowerPoint, Word documents, RSS/XML
and plain text files. For some of these supported file
file-types,
types, Yahoo Search provided cached links on
their search results allowing for viewing of these file-types
types in standard HTML. Using the Advanced
Search interface or Preferences settings, Yahoo Search allowed the customization of search results
and enabling of certain settings such as: SafeSearch, Language Selection, Number of results, Domain
restrictions, etc. For a Basic and starter guide to Yahoo Search, they also provided a Search Basics
tutorial. In 2005, Yahoo began to provide links to previous versions of pages archived on the
Wayback Machine. In the first week of May 2008, Yahoo launche launchedd a new search mash up called
Yahoo Glue, which is in beta testing.
Selection-based search
On June 20, 2007, Yahoo introduced a selection-based

selection based search feature called Yahoo Shortcuts.
When activated this selection-based
based search feature enabled users to invoke
invoke search using only their
mouse and receive search suggestions in floating windows while remaining on Yahoo properties such
as Yahoo Mail. This feature was only active on Yahoo web pages or pages within the Yahoo
Publisher Network. Yahoo Shortcuts required the content-owner
owner to modify the underlying HTML of
his or her webpage to call out the specific keywords to be enhanced. The technology for context-
context
aware selection-based
based search on Yahoo pages was first developed by Reiner Kraft.
SearchScan

Fig 9.00: SearchScan in action
On May 11, 2008, Yahoo introduced SearchScan. If enabled this add

add-on/feature
on/feature enhanced Yahoo
Search by automatically alerting users of viruses, spyware and spam websites.
Search verticals
Yahoo Search provided the ability to search across numerous vertical properties outside just the
Web at large. These included Images, Videos, Local, Shopping, Yahoo! Answers, Audio, Directory,
Jobs, News, Mobile, Travel and various other services as listed on their About Yahoo Search page.
Google Inc. is an American multinational technology company that specializes in Internet-

Internet
related services and products. These include online advertising technologies, search, cloud
computing, software, and hardware. Go Google
ogle was founded in 1998 by Larry Page and Sergey Brin
while they were Ph.D. students at Stanford University, in California. Together, they own about 14
percent of its shares, and control 56 percent of the stockholder voting power through supervoting
stock.. They incorporated Google as a privately held company on September 4, 1998. An initial public
offering (IPO) took place on August 19, 2004, and Google moved to its new headquarters in
Mountain View, California, nicknamed the Googleplex. In August 2015, Go Google
ogle announced plans to
reorganize its various interests as a conglomerate called Alphabet Inc. Google, Alphabet's leading
subsidiary, will continue to be the umbrella company for Alphabet's Internet interests. Upon
completion of the restructure, Sundar PiPichai
chai was appointed CEO of Google; he replaced Larry Page,
who became CEO of Alphabet.

The company's rapid growth since incorporation has triggered a chain of products,
acquisitions, and partnerships beyond Google's core search engine (Google Search). It offers
of services
designed for work and productivity (Google Docs, Sheets and Slides), email (Gmail/Inbox),
scheduling and time management (Google Calendar), cloud storage (Google Drive), social
networking (Google+), instant messaging and video chat (Google Al Allo/Duo),
lo/Duo), language translation
(Google Translate), mapping and turn
turn-by-turn
turn navigation (Google Maps/Waze), video sharing
(YouTube), notetaking (Google Keep), and photo organizing and editing (Google Photos). The
company leads the development of the Android mobile operating system, the Google Chrome web
browser, and Chrome OS, a lightweight operating system based on the Chrome browser. Google has
moved increasingly into hardware; from 2010 to 2015, it partnered with major electronics
manufacturers in the production
uction of its Nexus devices, and in October 2016, it released multiple
hardware products (including the Google Pixel smartphone, Home smart speaker, Wifi mesh wireless
router, and Daydream View virtual reality headset). The new hardware chief, Rick Osterloh,
Osterlo stated: "a
lot of the innovation that we want to do now ends up requiring controlling the end-to-end
end end user
experience". Google has also experimented with becoming an Internet carrier. In February 2010, it
announced Google Fiber, a fiber-optic
optic infrastructure
infrastructure that was installed in Kansas City; in April 2015,
it launched Project Fi in the United States, combining WiWi-Fi
Fi and cellular networks from different
providers; and in 2016, it announced the Google Station initiative to make public Wi Wi-Fi
Fi available
around the world, with initial deployment in India.
Alexa, a company that monitors commercial web traffic, lists Google.com as the most visited
website in the world. Several other Google services also figure in the top 100 most visited websites,
including YouTubee and Blogger. Google is the most valuable brand in the world, but has received
significant criticism involving issues such as privacy concerns, tax avoidance, antitrust, censorship,
and search neutrality. Google's mission statement, from the outset, was "to
"to organize the world's
information and make it universally accessible and useful", and its unofficial slogan was "Don't be
evil". In October 2015, the motto was replaced in the Alphabet corporate code of conduct by the
phrase "Do the right thing".
Market share
Google is the world's most popular search engine, with a market share of 80.52 percent as of
March, 2017. The world's most popular search engines (with >1% market share) are:
Search engine Market share in March 2017

Google 80.52%
Bing 6.92%
Baidu 5.94%
Yahoo! 5.35%

Bing is a web search engine owned and operated by Microsoft. The service has its origins in
Microsoft's previous search engines: MSN Search, Windows Live Search and later Live Search. Bing
provides a variety of search services, including web, video, image and map search products. It is
developed using ASP.NET.
Bing, Microsoft's replacement for Li Live

ve Search, was unveiled by Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer on
May 28, 2009, at the All Things Digital conference in San Diego, California, for release on June 1,
2009. Notable new features at the time included the listing of search suggestions while queries are
ar
entered and a list of related searches (called "Explore pane") based on semantic technology from
Powerset, which Microsoft had acquired in 2008.
In July 2009, Microsoft and Yahoo! announced a deal in which Bing would power Yahoo!
Search. All Yahoo! Search
h global customers and partners made the transition by early 2012. The deal
was altered in 2015, meaning Yahoo! was only required to use Bing for a "majority" of searches.
In October 2011, Microsoft stated that they were working on new backback-end
end search infrastructure
infr
with the goal of delivering faster and slightly more relevant search results for users. Known as
"Tiger", the new index-serving
serving technology had been incorporated into Bing globally since August
that year. In May 2012, Microsoft announced another redesign of its search engine that includes
"Sidebar", a social feature that searches users' social networks for information relevant to the search
query.
As of November 2015, Bing is the second largest search engine in the US, with a query volume
of 20.9%,, behind Google on 63.9%. Yahoo! Search, which Bing largely powers, has 12.5%.
Baidu, Inc. (Chinese: 百度;; pinyin: B Bǎidù, anglicized /ˈbaɪduː/ "BY-doo"),

doo"), incorporated on 18
January 2000, is a Chinese web services company headquartered at the Baidu Campus in i Beijing's
Haidian District. It is one of the largest internet companies, and one of the premier AI leaders in the
world. The holding company of the group was incorporated in the Cayman Islands.
Baidu offers many services, including a Chinese search engin

enginee for websites, videos, multimedia
files, news, translations and other useful functions, as well as global mapping service Baidu Maps.
Baidu offers 57 search and community services including Baidu Baike (an online, collaboratively
built encyclopedia) and a searchable, keyword-based
keyword based discussion forum. Baidu was established in
2000 by Robin Li and Eric Xu. Both of the co-founders
co founders are Chinese nationals who studied in Peking
University and worked overseas before returning to China. In December 2016, Baidu ranked 4th
overall in the Alexa Internet rankings.
Baidu's Global Business Unit, formed under the name of DU Group or DU Apps Studio, is an
app developer with a wide variety of popular award
award-winning
winning apps and services, accumulating over 2
billion users worldwide. It aims to provide innovative products, as well as new and exciting business
models and ways to interact with technology, through AI and mobile devices. It has also established
offices around the world including Brazil, India, Indonesia, Thailand, Egypt, Japan and the United

States, with the goal of becoming the core player in shaping how technology works, in every
continent. Its award-winning products include DU Battery Saver, DU Speed Booster, MoboMarket,
DU Browser, Facemoji Keyboard, DU Flashlight, DU Security, DU Cleaner, DU Privacy Vault, DU
Antivirus, Photo Wonder, DU Caller, DU Recorder, ES File Explorer, Simeji, and more. Baidu also
provides an official international and Chinese version of its widely popular online digital distribution
services Baidu App Store and Shouji Baidu respectively, both hosting vast amount of downloadable
content and applications from all over the world.
Baidu has the 2nd largest search engine in the world, and held a 76.05% market share in China's
search engines market, the largest in the world, as of April 2017. In December 2007, Baidu became
the first Chinese company to be included in the NASDAQ-100 index.
As of 2017, Baidu Search released Spider 3.0 which is capable of indexing over trillions of web
pages. Baidu offers multimedia content including MP3 music, and movies, and is the first in China to
offer Wireless Application Protocol (WAP) and personal digital assistant (PDA)-based mobile search.
Baidu Brain, the company's AI-based artificial neural network has achieved a remarkable 97%
accuracy rate in voice recognition and 99.7% rate in facial recognition, affirming the success of its AI
development.
Baidu Cloud, the company's cloud arm has received recognition from many industries due to its
unique offerings, it adopts an integrated approach that combines capabilities and resources in AI, Big
Data and Cloud Computing, providing customers with not only storage and computing but also
complete solutions and services that are ready to deploy. Numerous companies and organisations
have been using Baidu Cloud to increase the accuracy and efficiency of their products and services,
as well as developing new technologies. The customer base of Baidu Cloud has increased 10 folds
year-over-year, with traffic increasing eight folds and revenue increasing four folds. Recently, it has
released the ABC – STACK, a hybrid cloud platform that provides enterprise customers with
powerful and flexible solutions to effectively integrate and deploy AI into their businesses.
Baidu Baike is similar to Wikipedia as an online encyclopedia; however, unlike Wikipedia, only
registered users can edit the articles due to Chinese laws. While access to Wikipedia has been
intermittently blocked or certain articles filtered in China since June 2004, there is some controversy
about the degree to which Baidu cooperates with Chinese government censorship.
The company also hosts a music service Baidu Music that has more than 200 million monthly
active users, news service Baidu News Feed that has more than 100 million daily active users, and
food delivery service Baidu Waimai that has more than 100 million monthly active users. On 4
December 2015, Baidu announced plans to merge with Taihe Entertainment Group to help the service
compete with Apple Inc.'s Apple Music.
In July 2017, Baidu announced that its ambitious Apollo autonomous driving program (often
called the ‘Android of the autonomous driving industry’, an open source platform for self-driving that
includes hardware, software and cloud data services for autonomous vehicles) has over 50 partners
(automakers, tier 1 suppliers, component producers, startups, academic institutions, government
departments, artificial intelligence and technology companies), including FAW Group, one of the
major Chinese carmakers that will work with Baidu on commercialization of the technology. Other
partners include worldwide auto companies Chery, Volkswagen, General Motors, Hyundai, Daimler
AG (Mercedes-Benz), BYD, Ford, Changan Automobile, ZF Friedrichshafen, BAIC, JAC and Great

Wall Motors, as well as global organisations Tsinghua University, Intel, ZTE, Bosch, Continental
AG, Nvidia, Microsoft, Velodyne, NXP Semiconductors, TomTom, UCAR, Grab, AutonomouStuff,
Horizon Robotics and more.
By the end of 2020, Baidu hopes to offer a platform that can handle full autonomous driving on
both urban roads and highways, and mass producing its own self driving cars at a later period. It also
plans to use its voice interaction and AI operating system DuerOS that already has more than 100
partners (such as Nvidia, Haier, Media, HTC, Vivo, and Harman International), together with the
Apollo platform to create the world's largest autonomous driving system with high-precision maps,
and setting up Apollo companies around the world. Baidu has recently begun a spree of acquisitions
targeting AI and technology start-ups to further advance its AI ambitions, it aims to become the
global leader of Artificial Intelligence just as China outlines its plans to achieve global AI leadership
by 2030, and to "make DuerOS the most widely used conversational AI platform in the world".
Project Apollo has also been praised as "an important milestone for the automotive industry and
artificial intelligence". According to a report, Baidu's self-driving AI technology may be valued at
nearly US$650 billion and produce a US$120 billion annual revenue for the company by 2021, it will
also boost its market cap to over US$1 trillion in the long term.
Its first artificial intelligence (AI) developer conference Baidu Create was held at the China
National Convention Center (CNCC) in Beijing on 5 July 2017, it convened Baidu executives and
engineers as well as developers and experts across the AI industry.
As of September 2017, Baidu's market cap rose to US$83.47 billion, with a recent surge in its
stocks, net profit and revenue. It has announced partnership with AMD and will leverage the two
companies' world-class technology and software engineering capabilities to create a comprehensive
and open ecosystem to address the growing demand for data center workloads and provide more
intelligent human-computer interaction, as well as working with JD.com to offer AI-driven
advertising and app integration. At the same period, it has also led a joint investment of US$12 billion
with Alibaba Group, Tencent, JD.com and Didi Chuxing, acquiring 35% of China Unicom's stakes.
Baidu has created its own equity fund Baidu Fund Partnership to invest in internet and other
technology endeavors, as well as Apollo Fund to invest in future autonomous driving projects. It has
also announced plans to create a DuerOS Fund in the future.
Recently, Baidu has rolled out a new portable talking translator that can listen and speak in
several different languages. Smaller than a typical smartphone, the 140-gram translation device can
also be used as a portable Wi-Fi router and is able to operate on networks in 80 countries, it is still
under development currently. Baidu will also be inserting artificial intelligence (AI) technology into
smartphones, through its deep learning platform.
Baidu's stocks (BIDU) has been consistently given outperformed rating by several credit rating
and financial services groups including Macquarie Group, Credit Suisse and more, signalling the
positive outlook and potential of its stocks.
9.4 ALTAVISTA
Alta Vista is a crawler-based search engine, intending to send out software programs called
crawlers or spiders, to search the Web and index websites, since it began way back in 1995 (this is a
long time in Internet years) with the Internet’s first web index, Alta Vista has the accolade of being

one of the former search engines on the Web. Just as a speedy age comparison, Google started in
1998, and Yahoo commenced out as an Internet guide in 1994.
Here are some other ‘firsts’ and famous spotlights of Alta Vista, straight from their ‘About Us’
page;
• Extradites Internet’s first web index (1995)

• First multilingual search potentialities on the Internet
• First Internet search engine to launch audio, image and video search capabilities.
• Most furthered Internet search characteristics and capacities: translation, multimedia search
and language acknowledgement, and distinctiveness search.
• Granted 61 search-related patents, more than any other Internet search company.
9.4.1 Alta Vista Search Home Page

The AltaVista home page is glossy and refined. There is a search bar bolt in the centre, with
several tabbed search alternatives, including Images, MP3/Audio, News, and Video. Search filters are
available instantly; you can prefer to confine your search just to the United States (default), or you
can go universal. You can also bring back outcomes in all languages (default), or choose to go with
just Spanish or English languages results.
Below the main blue search bar area, there are textual links going to Toolbar, Translate,
Directory (this link goes to Yahoo’s Directory, since AltaVista’s answers are all furnished by Yahoo),
Shopping (which goes to Yahoo Shopping). Travel- Yahoo Yellow Pages, Yahoo Fare chase, Yahoo
people Finder, and then (as if that wasn’t enough!) there’s a link to more, which sends you right into
AltaVista Tools section. Including a text-only web search tool, AltaVista Family Filter, and a nifty
Conversion Calculator, there are a lot of good materials here.
9.4.2 Searching with AltaVista

An occasional look for first-grade math gave results that were precisely like what is arrived in
Yahoo for first-grade math. Again, that is because AltaVista’s search results are all supplied by
Yahoo. The search results page is as sleekly streamlined as the home page, a refreshing demarcation
to some other search tools that flood the searcher with advertisements as soon as they land on the
results page.
What is agreeably best about AltaVista’s results are the ‘Related Searches’ at the top of the
search results page. Including first-grade math worksheets, there were a lot better searches than were
originally come up with.
9.4.3 AltaVista Search Features

Even as you are using Yahoo, you can still use AltaVista as the letter’s features are very good.
Some of the features are as follows:
1) AltaVista BabelFish
This BabeleFish translation tool is a very important tool. Due to this maiden reason AltaVista has

high value, but there is even more to it, such as:
AltaVista MP3, Audio and video Search
AltaVista MP3 and audio search also bring back excellent results and their video Search has not
been unpleasant in the results department either.
AltaVista Advanced Search
AltaVista also has advanced search alternatives that permit you to set some fairly rigorous
parameters on your search, including Boolean formulations and file types. Last but not the least,
along with the BabelFish translation tool right there on your desktop, easily approachable once you
put in the toolbar; the toolbar of AltaVista contributes you standard toolbar choices.
Importance of AltaVista
Some of the reasons for its importance are as follows:
• Features: Their BableFish interlingual rendition (translation) tool alone establishes AltaVista
worth the time.
• Webmaster tools: It is emphatically having worth a look. You can find your pages in the
AltaVista Web index or find pages that connect to your site.
• History: AltaVista has been around for a long time in the search world. They have huge
search material archives.
9.5 EXCITE
Excite is medium to large-scale search engine and portal that is increasing its popularity. Excite
has developed very quickly this signifies a higher ranking. Excite will bring forth substantial traffic to
your website more significantly. Excite is the default choice search engine for AOL’s NetFind search
engine, Netscape’s NetCenter. While a web crawler asserts a smaller and separate database of
websites, it utilizes the Excite rating algorithm. For the most part, this entails a top ranking in four
other large and important search engines attributing to a top ranking in Excite.
Excite’s submitted goal is to furnish easy-to-access, applicable date to information seekers. If you
look up the keyword ‘NY Times’ chances are you are looking for one of the dozens of sites that cited
something from the paper that day, Not NY Times website. For this reason, before matching from its
index on the basis of its ranking algorithm, Excite, Pre-lists sites that it trusts will be most applicable
to your searches in a special colored section. These pre-selected search matches are chosen by human
editors.
Our first query about these results was, ‘How can we develop a website to be one of these first
returned sites in this particular coloured section.’ Excite appropriates these slots for sites that it feels
are natural or obvious websites for these keyword searches. Not all keywords will have a special
section with Excite selected sites, but some will.
The latest features of Excite are as follows:

• Excite only spiders your default page. In other words, the main home page of your site
(usually the index, htm page) is the only page that will be spidered by Excite.
• In some cases Excite will send a second spider back to your websites to spider the internal
pages of the website. The Excite contact would not disclose what caused a second spider
visit, though you can expect it has something to with the impertinence of a website, as often
the web page is changed.
This means that only one page of your website will likely achieve high rankings on Excite – your
index, htm or default page. If you construct doorway pages to reach top rankings in Excite, you
should register a different domain name for those doorway pages as a page contained within a folder
is unlikely to be considered by Excite.
In other words, if your doorway page is held in a folder off your root domain or even in the root
directory of the primary domain , such as: http://wwwprimarydomain.com doorway page , htm,
http;//www primarydomain.com/folder doorway page htm the page is unconvincing to be looked at
by Excite since it favors only the default pages. New domain names can be registered for certain
amount. Considering that each domain can hold a doorway page that could attain top 10 rankings on
several keywords, the final payment should easily cover the cost of the additional domain.
Another technique is to use a new domain- a separate but similar URL for major interior sections of
your website; for example, let us say you have established a website to sell your special brand of
gadgets. Let us guess that you sell your primary types of these widgets as follows: steel widgets,
cardboard widgets, pine widgets, plaster widgets. Imagine that the main page of your website talks
about your company background and then offers links to different pages that each talks about one of
your primary lines of these widgets. You could construct your site as follows:
Main home page URL: www widget.com
Sub page that discusses steel widgets: www.steel-widget.com
Sub page that discusses cardboard widgets: www.cardboard–widget.com
Sub page that discusses pine widgets: www.pine-widget.com
Sub page that discusses plaster widget: www.plaster-widget.com
Each sub page would have a default page or on index htm page, though they would come along to be
part and parcel of the same website. However, each of these new domains has a chance to attain its
own ranking in Excite. The auxiliary profit is that you can push each of the unique URLs separately
in all the search engines.
In this example, you could construct top ten rankings for each of the five separate domain names.
Nobody would have to know that the page hosted on steel-widget.com was not originally designed to
be the ‘home page’. For all anyone knows, this could be a steel widget-making company that also
makes pine, plaster and cardboard widgets.

9.6 HOTBOT
Hotbot is a search engine. Since the Web is not indexed in any standard criterion, detecting data can
seem somewhat difficult. Search engines are popular tools for locating web pages, but they often
return thousands of results. Search engines creep the Web and log the words from the web pages they
find in their databases. As some search engines have lumbered the words from over 1 billion
documents, the results can be deluging. Without a clear search strategy, using a search engine is like
digressing aimlessly in the heaps of a library trying to find a particular book.
Successful searching necessitates two fundamental steps. First, you must have a clear agreement in
how to device your search. You must distinguish the main constructs on your topic and find out any
equivalent word, surrogate spellings or variant word forms for the concepts. Second, you ought to
recognize how to use the diverse search tools usable on the Internet, for example, search engines (e.g.
AltaVista) are very dissimilar than subject directories (e.g. Yahoo) . Even search engines themselves
can deviate greatly in features, flexibility, size and accuracy.
The following presents an easy-to-follow procedure on using search engines and subject
directories for finding what you need on the web:
• Use subject directories and depict the conflict between a subject directory and a search
engine.
• Use incriminated and full Boolean logic, phrase searching, truncation and field searching
efficaciously.
• Distinguish central concepts, equivalent words and variant word forms in your search topic.
• Use fundamental search engines efficaciously, including AltaVista, Google. All the
Web/FAST and HotBot.
• Use Meta-search engines.
• Use specially databases when needed.
• Apply search schemes and techniques in a scavenger hunt practice.
For better results, brush up the topics in the order listed here. In each topic the session will spotlight
prime websites and/or provide exercises for practicing search techniques. When you click on a link,
the tutorial will change to a frames port. Specific teachings for exercising a technique will come
along in the left frame. The actual search engine or subject directory will appear in the right frame.
Use the search engine or directory and the proposed exercises to rehearse the search technique.
Note: As you will soon come upon. There are many efficient ways to state keywords and search criteria.
The HINTS and SHOW ME suggestions furnished throughout the tutorial offer one of the many possible
options for receiving applicable search results.
9.7 LYCOS
Lycos has been around a long time in Internet years; and has developed from allowing for its own
search results to altering on Ask.com Lycos has also made itself a partner with the National Center
for Missing and Exploited Children; you can connect the search for missing children and know how
to keep kids safe on the Internet as well. In addition, Lycos has some stellar parental controls to keep
the Internet safe for children; as always, it is proposed that parents use a safe search checklist to
individualize their own family’s Internet safety policy.
9.7.1 Lycos Home Page
The Lycos home page extends you quite a few selections. The main search bar is focused on at the
top of the page, with tabs for Web, people, yellow pages, shopping, images and audio and discussion.
The advanced search tab is right below the search bar.
Below the search bar, it begins to get a bit crowded on the lycos home page. There is weather, Lycos
Mail, Lycos market headlines, Lycos latest news headlines, Lycos video Lycos slide shows, Lycos is
more of a content centre than a search destination, so this is more or less anticipated, but it is still a bit
of a wrong direction. Just know this; you have a lot of alternatives on the Lycos home page.
Lycos Video Search has acted with Blinkx to power their video search effects, so now, when
searching for video on Lycos you will notice the Blinkx icon.
9.7.2 Lycos Search

Here are some tips to recall when using Lycos search. They should get you pretty far in your Lycos
exploring efforts.
Be specific as humanly as possible:
Lycos does not bring back results that are as applicable as you might anticipate from other search
engines but the more particular and brief you are, the better results you will obtain.
Use advanced search: Lycos advanced search alternatives are actually very well-planned, and will
assist your Lycos search results pile up the way you want them to. Lycos also backs up Boolean
search operators, which will help to narrow down your searches.
9.7.3 Lycos Features

Likely to be the top reason to be commended Lycos would not inevitably be for search results, but for
its fun features. Here is just a few Lycos search fun sites.
Lycos Entertainment: Lots of good stuff here, including Gamesville, Lycos Television and Lycos
Video. As is previously referred, Lycos is more of a content hub than a search engine terminus. This
is not to say that you cannot find things using Lycos; but that your time at Lycos believably would be
better spent employing their fun features (Lycos 50, Lycos Entertainment, etc.).
9.8 WEB CRAWLER

A Web crawler, sometimes called a spider, is an Internet bot that systematically browses the World
Wide Web, typically for the purpose of Web indexing (web spidering).
Web search engines and some other sites use Web crawling or spidering software to update their web
content or indices of others sites' web content. Web crawlers can copy all the pages they visit for later
processing by a search engine which indexes the downloaded pages so the users can search much
more efficiently.

Crawlers consume resources on the systems they visit and often visit sites without approval. Issues of
schedule, load, and "politeness" come into play when large collections of pages are accessed.
Mechanisms exist for public sites not wishing to be crawled to make this known to the crawling
agent. For instance, including a robots.txt file can request bots to index only parts of a website, or
nothing at all.
As the number of pages on the internet is extremely large, even the largest crawlers fall short of
making a complete index. For that reason search engines were bad at giving relevant search results in
the early years of the World Wide Web, before the year 2000. This is improved greatly by modern
search engines; nowadays very good results are given instantly.
Crawlers can validate hyperlinks and HTML code. They can also be used for web scraping (see also
data-driven programming).
9.8.1 Overview
A Web crawler starts with a list of URLs to visit, called the seeds. As the crawler visits these
URLs, it identifies all the hyperlinks in the page and adds them to the list of URLs to visit, called the
crawl frontier. URLs from the frontier are recursively visited according to a set of policies. If the
crawler is performing archiving of websites it copies and saves the information as it goes. The
archives are usually stored in such a way they can be viewed, read and navigated as they were on the
live web, but are preserved as ‘snapshots'.
The archive is known as the repository and is designed to store and manage the collection of web
pages. The repository only stores HTML pages and these pages are stored as distinct files. A
repository is similar to any other system that stores data, like a modern day database. The only
difference is that a repository does not need all the functionality offered by a database system. The
repository stores the most recent version of the web page retrieved by the crawler.
The large volume implies the crawler can only download a limited number of the Web pages
within a given time, so it needs to prioritize its downloads. The high rate of change can imply the
pages might have already been updated or even deleted.
The number of possible URLs crawled being generated by server-side software has also made it
difficult for web crawlers to avoid retrieving duplicate content. Endless combinations of HTTP GET
(URL-based) parameters exist, of which only a small selection will actually return unique content.
For example, a simple online photo gallery may offer three options to users, as specified through
HTTP GET parameters in the URL. If there exist four ways to sort images, three choices of thumbnail
size, two file formats, and an option to disable user-provided content, then the same set of content can
be accessed with 48 different URLs, all of which may be linked on the site. This mathematical
combination creates a problem for crawlers, as they must sort through endless combinations of
relatively minor scripted changes in order to retrieve unique content.
As Edwards et al. noted, "Given that the bandwidth for conducting crawls is neither infinite nor
free, it is becoming essential to crawl the Web in not only a scalable, but efficient way, if some
reasonable measure of quality or freshness is to be maintained." A crawler must carefully choose at
each step which pages to visit next.
9.8.2 Crawling Policies

The behavior of a Web crawler is the outcome of a combination of policies:
• a selection policy which states the pages to download,

• a re-visit policy which states when to check for changes to the pages,
• a politeness policy that states how to avoid overloading Web sites, and
• a parallelization policy that states how to coordinate distributed web crawlers.
9.8.3 Selection policy

Given the current size of the Web, even large search engines cover only a portion of the publicly
available part. A 2009 study showed even large-scale search engines index no more than 40-70% of
the indexable Web; a previous study by Steve Lawrence and Lee Giles showed that no search engine
indexed more than 16% of the Web in 1999. As a crawler always downloads just a fraction of the
Web pages, it is highly desirable for the downloaded fraction to contain the most relevant pages and
not just a random sample of the Web.
This requires a measure of importance for prioritizing Web pages. The importance of a page is a
function of its intrinsic quality, its popularity in terms of links or visits, and even of its URL (the
latter is the case of vertical search engines restricted to a single top-level domain, or search engines
restricted to a fixed Web site). Designing a good selection policy has an added difficulty: it must
work with partial information, as the complete set of Web pages is not known during crawling.
Cho et al. made the first study on policies for crawling scheduling. Their data set was a 180,000-
pages crawl from the stanford.edu domain, in which a crawling simulation was done with different
strategies. The ordering metrics tested were breadth-first, backlink count and partial Pagerank
calculations. One of the conclusions was that if the crawler wants to download pages with high
Pagerank early during the crawling process, then the partial Pagerank strategy is the better, followed
by breadth-first and backlink-count. However, these results are for just a single domain. Cho also
wrote his Ph.D. dissertation at Stanford on web crawling.
9.8.4Restricting followed links

A crawler may only want to seek out HTML pages and avoid all other MIME types. In order to
request only HTML resources, a crawler may make an HTTP HEAD request to determine a Web
resource's MIME type before requesting the entire resource with a GET request. To avoid making
numerous HEAD requests, a crawler may examine the URL and only request a resource if the URL
ends with certain characters such as .html, .htm, .asp, .aspx, .php, .jsp, .jspx or a slash. This strategy
may cause numerous HTML Web resources to be unintentionally skipped.
Some crawlers may also avoid requesting any resources that have a "?" in them (are dynamically
produced) in order to avoid spider traps that may cause the crawler to download an infinite number of
URLs from a Web site. This strategy is unreliable if the site uses URL rewriting to simplify its URLs.
9.8.5 URL normalization

Crawlers usually perform some type of URL normalization in order to avoid crawling the same
resource more than once. The term URL normalization, also called URL canonicalization, refers to
the process of modifying and standardizing a URL in a consistent manner. There are several types of
normalization that may be performed including conversion of URLs to lowercase, removal of "." and
".." segments, and adding trailing slashes to the non-empty path component.
9.8.6 Path-ascending crawling

Some crawlers intend to download as many resources as possible from a particular web site. So path-
ascending crawler was introduced that would ascend to every path in each URL that it intends to
crawl. For example, when given a seed URL of http://llama.org/hamster/monkey/page.html, it will
attempt to crawl /hamster/monkey/, /hamster/, and /. Cothey found that a path-ascending crawler was
very effective in finding isolated resources, or resources for which no inbound link would have been
found in regular crawling.
9.8.7 Focused crawling

The importance of a page for a crawler can also be expressed as a function of the similarity of a page
to a given query. Web crawlers that attempt to download pages that are similar to each other are
called focused crawler or topical crawlers. The concepts of topical and focused crawling were first
introduced by Filippo Menczer and by Soumen Chakrabarti et al.
The main problem in focused crawling is that in the context of a Web crawler, we would like to be
able to predict the similarity of the text of a given page to the query before actually downloading the
page. A possible predictor is the anchor text of links; this was the approach taken by Pinkerton in the
first web crawler of the early days of the Web. Diligenti et al. propose using the complete content of
the pages already visited to infer the similarity between the driving query and the pages that have not
been visited yet. The performance of a focused crawling depends mostly on the richness of links in
the specific topic being searched, and a focused crawling usually relies on a general Web search
engine for providing starting points.
9.8.8 Academic-focused crawler

An example of the focused crawlers are academic crawlers, which crawls free-access academic
related documents, such as the citeseerxbot, which is the crawler of CiteSeerX search engine. Other
academic search engines are Google Scholar and Microsoft Academic Search etc. Because most
academic papers are published in PDF formats, such kind of crawler is particularly interested in
crawling PDF, PostScript files, Microsoft Word including their zipped formats. Because of this,
general open source crawlers, such as Heritrix, must be customized to filter out other MIME types, or
a middleware is used to extract these documents out and import them to the focused crawl database
and repository. Identifying whether these documents are academic or not is challenging and can add a
significant overhead to the crawling process, so this is performed as a post crawling process using
machine learning or regular expression algorithms. These academic documents are usually obtained
from home pages of faculties and students or from publication page of research institutes. Because
academic documents takes only a small fraction in the entire web pages, a good seed selection are
important in boosting the efficiencies of these web crawlers. Other academic crawlers may download
plain text and HTML files, that contains metadata of academic papers, such as titles, papers, and
abstracts. This increases the overall number of papers, but a significant fraction may not provide free
PDF downloads.
9.8.9 Re-visit policy

The Web has a very dynamic nature, and crawling a fraction of the Web can take weeks or months.
By the time a Web crawler has finished its crawl, many events could have happened, including
creations, updates, and deletions.
From the search engine's point of view, there is a cost associated with not detecting an event, and thus
having an outdated copy of a resource. The most-used cost functions are freshness and age.
Freshness: This is a binary measure that indicates whether the local copy is accurate or not. The
freshness of a page p in the repository at time t is defined as:
Age: This is a measure that indicates how outdated the local copy is. The age of a page p in the
repository, at time t is defined as:
Coffman et al. worked with a definition of the objective of a Web crawler that is equivalent to
freshness, but use a different wording: they propose that a crawler must minimize the fraction of time
pages remain outdated. They also noted that the problem of Web crawling can be modeled as a
multiple-queue, single-server polling system, on which the Web crawler is the server and the Web
sites are the queues. Page modifications are the arrival of the customers, and switch-over times are the
interval between page accesses to a single Web site. Under this model, mean waiting time for a
customer in the polling system is equivalent to the average age for the Web crawler.
The objective of the crawler is to keep the average freshness of pages in its collection as high as
possible, or to keep the average age of pages as low as possible. These objectives are not equivalent:
in the first case, the crawler is just concerned with how many pages are out-dated, while in the second
case, the crawler is concerned with how old the local copies of pages are.
Two simple re-visiting policies were studied by Cho and Garcia-Molina:
• Uniform policy: This involves re-visiting all pages in the collection with the same
frequency, regardless of their rates of change.
• Proportional policy: This involves re-visiting more often the pages that change more
frequently. The visiting frequency is directly proportional to the (estimated) change
frequency.
In both cases, the repeated crawling order of pages can be done either in a random or a fixed order.
Cho and Garcia-Molina proved the surprising result that, in terms of average freshness, the uniform
policy outperforms the proportional policy in both a simulated Web and a real Web crawl. Intuitively,
the reasoning is that, as web crawlers have a limit to how many pages they can crawl in a given time
frame, (1) they will allocate too many new crawls to rapidly changing pages at the expense of less
frequently updating pages, and (2) the freshness of rapidly changing pages lasts for shorter period
than that of less frequently changing pages. In other words, a proportional policy allocates more
resources to crawling frequently updating pages, but experiences less overall freshness time from
them.
To improve freshness, the crawler should penalize the elements that change too often. The optimal re-
visiting policy is neither the uniform policy nor the proportional policy. The optimal method for
keeping average freshness high includes ignoring the pages that change too often, and the optimal for
keeping average age low is to use access frequencies that monotonically (and sub-linearly) increase
with the rate of change of each page. In both cases, the optimal is closer to the uniform policy than to
the proportional policy: as Coffman et al. note, "in order to minimize the expected obsolescence time,
the accesses to any particular page should be kept as evenly spaced as possible". Explicit formulas for
the re-visit policy are not attainable in general, but they are obtained numerically, as they depend on
the distribution of page changes. Cho and Garcia-Molina show that the exponential distribution is a
good fit for describing page changes, while Ipeirotis et al. show how to use statistical tools to
discover parameters that affect this distribution. Note that the re-visiting policies considered here
regard all pages as homogeneous in terms of quality ("all pages on the Web are worth the same"),
something that is not a realistic scenario, so further information about the Web page quality should be
included to achieve a better crawling policy.
9.8.10 Politeness policy

Crawlers can retrieve data much quicker and in greater depth than human searchers, so they can have
a crippling impact on the performance of a site. Needless to say, if a single crawler is performing
multiple requests per second and/or downloading large files, a server would have a hard time keeping
up with requests from multiple crawlers.
As noted by Koster, the use of Web crawlers is useful for a number of tasks, but comes with a price
for the general community. The costs of using Web crawlers include:
• network resources, as crawlers require considerable bandwidth and operate with a high
degree of parallelism during a long period of time;
• server overload, especially if the frequency of accesses to a given server is too high;
• poorly written crawlers, which can crash servers or routers, or which download pages they
cannot handle; and
• personal crawlers that, if deployed by too many users, can disrupt networks and Web
servers.
A partial solution to these problems is the robots exclusion protocol, also known as the robots.txt
protocol that is a standard for administrators to indicate which parts of their Web servers should not
be accessed by crawlers. This standard does not include a suggestion for the interval of visits to the
same server, even though this interval is the most effective way of avoiding server overload. Recently
commercial search engines like Google, Ask Jeeves, MSN and Yahoo! Search are able to use an extra
"Crawl-delay:" parameter in the robots.txt file to indicate the number of seconds to delay between
requests.
The first proposed interval between successive pageloads was 60 seconds. However, if pages were
downloaded at this rate from a website with more than 100,000 pages over a perfect connection with
zero latency and infinite bandwidth, it would take more than 2 months to download only that entire
Web site; also, only a fraction of the resources from that Web server would be used. This does not
seem acceptable.
Cho uses 10 seconds as an interval for accesses, and the WIRE crawler uses 15 seconds as the default.
The MercatorWeb crawler follows an adaptive politeness policy: if it took t seconds to download a
document from a given server, the crawler waits for 10t seconds before downloading the next page.
Dill et al. use 1 second.
For those using Web crawlers for research purposes, a more detailed cost-benefit analysis is needed
and ethical considerations should be taken into account when deciding where to crawl and how fast to
crawl.
Anecdotal evidence from access logs shows that access intervals from known crawlers vary between
20 seconds and 3–4 minutes. It is worth noticing that even when being very polite, and taking all the
safeguards to avoid overloading Web servers, some complaints from Web server administrators are
received. Brin and Page note that: "... running a crawler which connects to more than half a million
servers (...) generates a fair amount of e-mail and phone calls. Because of the vast number of people
coming on line, there are always those who do not know what a crawler is, because this is the first
one they have seen."
9.8.11 Parallelization policy

A parallel crawler is a crawler that runs multiple processes in parallel. The goal is to maximize the
download rate while minimizing the overhead from parallelizatio
parallelizationn and to avoid repeated downloads
of the same page. To avoid downloading the same page more than once, the crawling system requires
a policy for assigning the new URLs discovered during the crawling process, as the same URL can be
found by two different crawling
awling processes.
9.8.12 Web Crawler Architectures
Fig. 9.00 A high level architecture of standard Web Crawler
A crawler must not only have a good crawling strategy, as earlier, but it should also have highly
optimized computer architecture (see Figure 9.1)
Shkapenyuk and Suel mentioned that, ‘While it is fairly easy to build a slow crawler that downloads a
few pages per second for a short period of time, building a high
high-performance
performance system that can
download hundreds of millions of pages over several wee
weeks
ks presents a number of challenges in
system design, I/O and network efficiency, and robustness and manageability.’
Web crawlers are a fundamental part of search engines and inside information on their algorithms and
architecture are maintained as business secrets. When crawler inventions are issued, there is often a
significant lack of detail that keeps others form procreating
procreating the work. There are also rising issues
about ‘search engine spamming’, which forbid major search engines from publishing their higher-
higher
ranking algorithms.
Examples of web crawlers
The following is a list of published crawler architectures for general-purpose

purpose crawlers (excluding
focused web crawlers), with a brief description that includes the names given to the different
components and outstanding features:
• Bingbot is the name of Microsoft's Bing webcrawler. It replaced Msnbot.

• FAST Crawler
wler is a distributed crawler.

• Googlebot is described in some detail, but the reference is only about an early version of
its architecture, which was based in C++ and Python. The crawler was integrated with the
indexing process, because text parsing was done for full-text indexing and also for URL
extraction. There is a URL server that sends lists of URLs to be fetched by several crawling
processes. During parsing, the URLs found were passed to a URL server that checked if the
URL have been previously seen. If not, the URL was added to the queue of the URL server.
• GM Crawl is a crawler highly scalable usable in SaaS mode
• PolyBot is a distributed crawler written in C++ and Python, which is composed of a "crawl
manager", one or more "downloaders" and one or more "DNS resolvers". Collected URLs are
added to a queue on disk, and processed later to search for seen URLs in batch mode. The
politeness policy considers both third and second level domains (e.g.: www.example.com and
www2.example.com are third level domains) because third level domains are usually hosted
by the same Web server.
• RBSE was the first published web crawler. It was based on two programs: the first
program, "spider" maintains a queue in a relational database, and the second program "mite",
is a modified www ASCII browser that downloads the pages from the Web.
• Swiftbot is Swiftype's web crawler, designed specifically for indexing a single or small,
defined group of web sites to create a highly customized search engine. It enables unique
features such as real-time indexing that are unavailable to other enterprise search providers.
• WebCrawler was used to build the first publicly available full-text index of a subset of the
Web. It was based on lib-WWW to download pages, and another program to parse and order
URLs for breadth-first exploration of the Web graph. It also included a real-time crawler that
followed links based on the similarity of the anchor text with the provided query.
• WebFountain is a distributed, modular crawler similar to Mercator but written in C++. It
features a "controller" machine that coordinates a series of "ant" machines. After repeatedly
downloading pages, a change rate is inferred for each page and a non-linear programming
method must be used to solve the equation system for maximizing freshness. The authors
recommend to use this crawling order in the early stages of the crawl, and then switch to a
uniform crawling order, in which all pages are being visited with the same frequency.
• WebRACE is a crawling and caching module implemented in Java, and used as a part of a
more generic system called eRACE. The system receives requests from users for
downloading web pages, so the crawler acts in part as a smart proxy server. The system also
handles requests for "subscriptions" to Web pages that must be monitored: when the pages
change, they must be downloaded by the crawler and the subscriber must be notified. The
most outstanding feature of WebRACE is that, while most crawlers start with a set of "seed"
URLs, WebRACE is continuously receiving new starting URLs to crawl from.
• World Wide Web Worm was a crawler used to build a simple index of document titles and
URLs. The index could be searched by using the grep Unix command.
• Yahoo! Slurp was the name of the Yahoo! Search crawler until Yahoo! contracted with
Microsoft to use Bingbot instead.
• In addition to the specific crawler architectures listed above, there are general crawler
architectures published by Cho and Chakrabarti.
Open-source crawlers
• Frontera is web crawling framework implementing crawl frontier component and

providing scalability primitives for web crawler applications.
• GNU Wget is a command-line-operated crawler written in C and released under the GPL.
It is typically used to mirror Web and FTP sites.
• GRUB is an open source distributed search crawler that Wikia Search used to crawl the
web.
• Heritrix is the Internet Archive's archival-quality crawler, designed for archiving periodic
snapshots of a large portion of the Web. It was written in Java.
• ht://Dig includes a Web crawler in its indexing engine.
• HTTrack uses a Web crawler to create a mirror of a web site for off-line viewing. It is
written in C and released under the GPL.
• mnoGoSearch is a crawler, indexer and a search engine written in C and licensed under the
GPL (*NIX machines only)
• news-please is an integrated crawler and information extractor specifically written for news
articles under the Apache License. It supports crawling and extraction of full-websites (by
recursively traversing all links or the sitemap) and single articles.
• Apache Nutch is a highly extensible and scalable web crawler written in Java and released
under an Apache License. It is based on Apache Hadoop and can be used with Apache Solr or
Elasticsearch.
• Open Search Server is a search engine and web crawler software release under the GPL.
• PHP-Crawler is a simple PHP and MySQL based crawler released under the BSD License.
• Scrapy, an open source webcrawler framework, written in python (licensed under BSD).
• Seeks, a free distributed search engine (licensed under AGPL).
• Sphinx (search engine), a free search crawler, written in c++.
• StormCrawler, a collection of resources for building low-latency, scalable web crawlers on
Apache Storm (Apache License).
• tkWWW Robot, a crawler based on the tkWWW web browser (licensed under GPL).
• Xapian, a search crawler engine, written in c++.
• YaCy, a free distributed search engine, built on principles of peer-to-peer networks
(licensed under GPL).
• Octoparse, a free client-side Windows web crawler written in .NET.
9.9 META-SEARCH ENGINES

A metasearch engine (or aggregator) is a search tool that uses another search engine's data to
produce their own results from the Internet. Metasearch engines take input from a user and
simultaneously send out queries to third party search engines for results. Sufficient data is gathered,
formatted by their ranks and presented to the users.
However, Metasearch also has issues. Scores of websites stored on search engines are all
different: this can draw in irrelevant documents. Other problems such as spamming also significantly
reduce the accuracy of the search. The process of fusion aims to tackle this issue and improve the
engineering of a metasearch engine.

Fig 9.00: Meta search engine block diagram
There are many types of metasearch engines available to allow users to access specialised
information in a particular field. These include Savvysearch engine and Metaseek engine.
9.9.1 Advantages
By sending multiple queries to several other search engines this extends the search coverage of
the topic and allows more information to be found. They use the indexes built by other search
engines, aggregating and often post-processing
post results in unique ways. A metasearch engine has an
advantage over a single search engine because more results can be retrieved with the same amount of
exertion. It also reduces the work of users from having to individually type in searches from different
engines to look for resources.
Metasearching is also a useful approach if the purpose of the user’s search is to get an overview
of the topic or to get quick answers. Instead of having to go through multiple search engines like
Yahoo! or Google and comparing results,
results, metasearch engines are able to quickly compile and
combine results. They can do it either by listing results from each engine queried with no additional
post-processing
processing (Dogpile) or by analyzing the results and ranking them by their own rules (IxQuick,
Metacrawler, and Vivismo).
9.9.2 Disadvantages

Metasearch engines are not capable of decoding query forms or able to fully translate query
syntax. The number of links generated by metasearch engines are limited, and therefore do not
provide the user with the complete results of a query. The majority of metasearch engines do not
provide over ten linked files from a single search engine, and generally do not interact with larger
search engines for results. Sponsored webpages are prioritised and are normally displayed first.
Metasearching also gives the illusion that there is more coverage of the topic queried,
particularly if the user is searching for popular or commonplace information. It's common to end
with multiple identical results from the queried engines. It is also harder for users to search with
advanced search syntax to be sent with the query, so results may not be as precise as when a user is
using an advanced search interface at a specific engine. This results in many metasearch engines
using simple searching.
9.9.3 Operation
A metasearch engine accepts a single search request from the user. This search request is then
passed on to another search engine’s database. A metasearch engine does not create a database of
webpages but generates a virtual database to integrate data from multiple sources.
Since every search engine is unique and has different algorithms for generating ranked data,
duplicates will therefore also be generated. To remove duplicates,a metasearch engine processes this
data and applies its own algorithm. A revised list is produced as an output for the user. When a
metasearch engine contacts other search engines, these search engines will respond in three ways:
They will both cooperate and provide complete access to interface for the metasearch engine,
including private access to the index database, and will inform the metasearch engine of any changes
made upon the index database;
Search engines can behave in a non-cooperative manner whereby they will not deny or provide
any access to interfaces;
The search engine can be completely hostile and refuse the metasearch engine total access to
their database and in serious circumstances, by seeking legal methods.
Architecture of ranking
Webpages that are highly ranked on many search engines are likely to be more relevant in
providing useful information. However, all search engines have different ranking scores for each
website and most of the time these scores are not the same. This is because search engines prioritise
different criteria and methods for scoring, hence a website might appear highly ranked on one search
engine and lowly ranked on another. This is a problem because Metasearch engines rely heavily on
the consistency of this data to generate reliable accounts.
Fusion
A metasearch engine uses the process of Fusion to filter data for more efficient results. The two
main fusion methods used are: Collection Fusion and Data Fusion.
Collection Fusion: also known as distributed retrieval, deals specifically with search engines
that index unrelated data. To determine how valuable these sources are, Collection Fusion looks at
the content and then ranks the data on how likely it is to provide relevant information in relation to
the query. From what is generated, Collection Fusion is able to pick out the best resources from the
rank. These chosen resources are then merged into a list.
Data Fusion: deals with information retrieved from search engines that indexes common data
sets. The process is very similar. The initial rank scores of data are merged into a single list, after
which the original ranks of each of these documents are analysed. Data with high scores indicate a
high level of relevancy to a particular query and are therefore selected. To produce a list, the scores
must be normalized using algorithms such as CombSum. This is because search engines adopt
different policies of algorithms resulting in the score produced being incomparable.
9.9.4 Spamdexing
Spamdexing is the deliberate manipulation of search engine indexes. It uses a number of methods
to manipulate the relevance or prominence of resources indexed in a manner unaligned with the
intention of the indexing system. Spamdexing can be very distressing for users and problematic for
search engines because the return contents of searches have poor precision. This will eventually
result in the search engine becoming unreliable and not dependable for the user. To tackle
Spamdexing, search robot algorithms are made more complex and are changed almost everyday to
eliminate the problem.
It is a major problem for metasearch engines because it tampers with the search robot’s indexing
criteria, which are heavily relied upon to format ranking lists. Spamdexing manipulates the natural
ranking system of a search engine, and places websites higher on the ranking list than they would
naturally be placed. There are three primary methods used to achieve this:
Content spam
Content spam are the techniques that alter the logical view that a search engine has over the
page's contents. Techniques include:
Keyword Stuffing - Calculated placements of keywords within a page to raise the keyword count,
variety, and density of the page
Hidden/Invisible Text - Unrelated text disguised by making it the same color as the background,
using a tiny font size, or hiding it within the HTML code
Meta-tag Stuffing - Repeating keywords in meta tags and/or using keywords unrelated to the
site's content
Doorway Pages - Low quality webpages with little content, but relatable keywords or phrases
Scraper Sites - Programs that allow websites to copy content from other websites and create
content for a website
Article Spinning - Rewriting existing articles as opposed to copying content from other sites
Machine Translation - Uses machine translation to rewrite content in several different languages,
resulting in illegible text
Link spam
Link spam are links between pages present for reasons other than merit. Techniques include:
• Link-building Software - Automating the search engine optimization (SEO) process

• Link Farms - Pages that reference each other (also known as mutual admiration societies)
• Hidden Links - Placing hyperlinks where visitors won't or can't see them
• Sybil Attack - Forging of multiple identities for malicious intent
• Spam Blogs - Blogs created solely for commercial promotion and the passage of link
authority to target sites
• Page Hijacking - Creating a copy of a popular website with similar content, but redirects
web surfers to unrelated or even malicious websites
• Buying Expired Domains - Buying expiring domains and replacing pages with links to
unrelated websites
• Cookie Stuffing - Placing an affiliate tracking cookie on a website visitor's computer
without their knowledge
• Forum Spam - Websites that can be edited by users to insert links to spam sites
Cloaking
This is a SEO technique in which different materials and information are sent to the web crawler
and to the web browser. It is commonly used as a spamdexing technique because it can trick search
engines into either visiting a site that is substantially different from the search engine description or
giving a certain site a higher ranking.
9.9.5 Example: ProFusion
Fig 9.00: Profusion sample (http://www.searchengines.net/profusion_se.htm)
ProFusion is a META search engine on steroids! It will search up to 10 search engines in

parallel, and concatenate the results. One excellent feature of ProFusion is the option to verify the
links prior to displaying the summary page -- the extra time that this takes is worth it when you see
how much less frustrating the results are.

GET HTML:
It's quite tricky to get ProFusion up and running on your site, but the effort's worth it. First, go to
this page (ftp://ftp.ittc.ukans.edu/pub/profusion/banner.html). Look at the underlying source code for
this page, and cut and paste everything between the <center> and </center> tags (including the tags!)
into your own site. Next make a directory on your web server under the one in which you stored the
page containing the ProFusion HTML code. Call this directory "images". Next go to this page, and
save the picture as "title.gif". Upload the picture into the images directory you just created. Phew!
That should get ProFusion up and running for you!
NOTE: If the ProFusion FTP server seems to get stuck without displaying a list of files, just click
the "STOP" button on your browser and the directory listing will pop up.
9.10 WEB PORTAL

A Web portal is a specially designed website that brings information together from diverse
sources in a uniform way like emails, forums, and search engines etc. Usually, each information
source gets its dedicated area on the page for displaying information (a portlet); often, the user can
configure which ones to display. Variants of portals include mashups and intranet "dashboards" for
executives and managers. The extent to which content is displayed in a "uniform way" may depend
on the intended user and the intended purpose, as well as the diversity of the content. Very often
design emphasis is on a certain "metaphor" for configuring and customizing the presentation of the
content and the chosen implementation framework and/or code libraries. In addition, the role of the
user in an organization may determine which content can be added to the portal or deleted from the
portal configuration.
A portal may use a search engine API to permit users to search intranet as opposed to extranet
content by restricting which domains may be searched. Apart from this common search engines
feature, web portals may offer other services such as e-mail, news, stock quotes, information from
databases and even entertainment content. Portals provide a way for enterprises and organizations to
provide a consistent look and feel with access control and procedures for multiple applications and
databases, which otherwise would have been different web entities at various URLs. The features
available may be restricted by whether access is by an authorized and authenticated user (employee,
member) or an anonymous site visitor.
Examples of early public web portals were AOL, Excite, Netvibes, iGoogle, MSN, Naver, Lycos,
Prodigy, Indiatimes, Rediff, and Yahoo!. See for example, the "My Yahoo!" feature of Yahoo! that
may have inspired such features as the later Google "iGoogle" (discontinued as of November 1,
2013.) The configurable side-panels of, for example, the modern Opera browser and the option of
"Speed Dial" pages by most browsers continue to reflect the earlier "portal" metaphor.
9.10.1 History:
In the late 1990s the Web portal was a Web IT buzzword. After the proliferation of Web
browsers in the late-1990s many companies tried to build or acquire a portal to attempt to obtain a
share of an Internet market. The Web portal gained special attention because it was, for many users,
the starting point of their Web browsing if it was set as their home page. The content and branding of
a portal could change as Internet companies merged or were acquired. Netscape became a part of

America Online, the Walt Disney Company launched Go.com, IBM and others launched Prodigy (-
only users.) Portal metaphors are widely used by public library sites for borrowers using a login as
users and by university intranets for students and for faculty. Vertical markets remain for ISV's
offering management and executive intranet "dashboards" for corporations and government agencies
in areas such as GRC and risk management.
9.10.2 Types of Portals:

Vertical and Horizontal Portals
Web portals are sometimes classified as horizontal or vertical. A horizontal portal is used as a
platform to several companies in the same economic sector or to the same type of manufacturers or
distributors. A vertical portal (also known as a "vortal") is a specialized entry point to a specific
market or industry niche, subject area, or interest. Some vertical portals are known as "vertical
information portals" (VIPs). VIPs provide news, editorial content, digital publications, and e-
commerce capabilities. In contrast to traditional vertical portals, VIPs also provide dynamic
multimedia applications including social networking, video posting, and blogging.
Personal Web portals
A personal portal is a Web page at a Web site on the World Wide Web or a local HTML home
page including JavaScript and perhaps running in a modified Web browser. A personal portal
typically provides personalized capabilities to its visitors or its local user, providing a pathway to
other content. It may be designed to use distributed applications, different numbers and types of
middleware and hardware to provide services from a number of different sources and may run on a
non-standard local Web server. In addition, business portals can be designed for sharing and
collaboration in workplaces. A further business-driven requirement of portals is that the content be
presented on multiple platforms such as personal computers, personal digital assistants (PDAs), and
cell phones/mobile phone/mobile phones. Information, news, and updates are examples of content
that would be delivered through such a portal. Personal portals can be related to any specific topic
such as providing friend information on a social network or providing links to outside content that
may help others beyond your reach of services. Portals are not limited to simply providing links.
Outside of business intracet user, very often simpler portals become replaced with richer mashup
designs. Within enterprises, early portals were often replaced by much more powerful "dashboard"
designs. Some also have relied on newer protocols such as some version of RSS aggregation and may
or may not involve some degree of Web harvesting. Examples of personal portals include:
home.psafe.com – A personal portal based on adaptive neural network technology provides

customizable content according to each user's navigation, and provide full security against viruses,
malware, phishing and bank fraud. The portal is developed by Brazilian online security company
PSafe.
Government Web portals
At the end of the dot-com boom in the 1990s, many governments had already committed to
creating portal sites for their citizens. These included primary portals to the governments as well as
portals developed for specific audiences. Examples of government Web portals include:
• australia.gov.au for Australia.

• USA.gov for the United States (in English) & GobiernoUSA.gov (in Spanish).
• www.gov.lk for Sri Lanka.
• Disability.gov for citizens with disabilities in the United States.
• Europa (Web portal) links to all EU agencies and institutions in addition to press releases
and audiovisual content from press conferences.
• gov.uk for citizens & businesslink.gov.uk for businesses in the United Kingdom.
• Health-EU portal gathers all relevant health topics from across Europe.
• india.gov.in for India.
• National Resource Directory links to resources for United States Service Members,
Veterans and their families.
• govt.nz for New Zealand.
• Saudi.gov.sa for Saudi Arabia.
• https://online.belastingdienst.cw for the Tax Authority of Curaçao (part of the Kingdom of
the Netherlands)
Cultural portals
Cultural portal aggregate digitised cultural collections of galleries, libraries (see: library portal),
archives and museums. This type of portal provides a point of access to invisible Web cultural
content that may not be indexed by standard search engines. Digitised collections can include books,
artworks, photography, journals, newspapers, music, sound recordings, film, maps, diaries and letters,
and archived websites as well as the descriptive metadata associated with each type of cultural work.
These portals are usually based around a specific national or regional groupings of institutions.
Examples of cultural portals include:
• DigitalNZ – A cultural portal led by the National Library of New Zealand focused on New
Zealand digital content.
• Europeana – A cultural portal for the European Union based in the National Library of the
Netherlands and overseen by the Europeana Foundation.
• Trove – A cultural portal led by the National Library of Australia focused on Australian
content.
• In development - Digital Public Library of America
• TUT.by - A commercial cultural portal focused on Belarusian digital content.
Corporate Web portals
Corporate intranets became common during the 1990s. As intranets grew in size and complexity,
webmasters were faced with increasing content and user management challenges. A consolidated
view of company information was judged insufficient; users wanted personalization and
customization. Webmasters, if skilled enough, were able to offer some capabilities, but for the most
part ended up driving users away from using the intranet.
Many companies began to offer tools to help webmasters manage their data, applications and
information more easily, and through personalized views. Portal solutions can also include workflow
management, collaboration between work groups, and policy-managed content publication. Most can
allow internal and external access to specific corporate information using secure authentication or
single sign-on.

JSR168 Standards emerged around 2001. Java Specification Request (JSR) 168 standards allow
the interoperability of portlets across different portal platforms. These standards allow portal
developers, administrators and consumers to integrate standards-based portals and portlets across a
variety of vendor solutions.
The concept of content aggregation seems to still gain momentum and portal solution will likely
continue to evolve significantly over the next few years. The Gartner Group predicts generation 8
portals to expand on the Business Mashups concept of delivering a variety of information, tools,
applications and access points through a single mechanism.
With the increase in user generated content, disparate data silos, and file formats, information
architects and taxonomist will be required to allow users the ability to tag (classify) the data. This will
ultimately cause a ripple effect where users will also be generating ad hoc navigation and information
flows.
Corporate Portals also offer customers & employees self-service opportunities.
Stock portals
Also known as stock-share portals, stock market portals or stock exchange portals are Web-based
applications that facilitates the process of informing the share-holders with substantial online data
such as the latest price, ask/bids, the latest News, reports and announcements. Some stock portals use
online gateways through a central depository system (CDS) for the visitors (ram) to buy or sell their
shares or manage their portfolio.
Search portals
Search portals aggregate results from several search engines into one page. You can find search
portals specialized in a product, for example property search portals. Library search portals are also
known as discovery interfaces.
Property search portals
Property search portals aggregate data about properties for sale by real estate agents. Examples in
the UK include Zoopla, Rightmove, Nestoria and Nuroa. Examples in the US include Propertini.
Tender portals
A tender portal is a gateway for government suppliers to bid on providing goods and services.
Tender portals allow users to search, modify, submit, review and archive data in order to provide a
complete online tendering process.
Using online tendering, bidders can do any of the following:
• Receive notification of the tenders.

• Receive tender documents online.
• Fill out the forms online.
• Submit proposals and documents.

• Submit bids online.
Hosted Web portals
Hosted Web portals gained popularity and a number of companies began offering them as a
hosted service. The hosted portal market fundamentally changed the composition of portals. In many
ways they served simply as a tool for publishing information instead of the loftier goals of integrating
legacy applications or presenting correlated data from distributed databases. The early hosted portal
companies such as Hyperoffice.com or the now defunct InternetPortal.com focused on collaboration
and scheduling in addition to the distribution of corporate data. As hosted Web portals have risen in
popularity their feature set has grown to include hosted databases, document management, email,
discussion forums and more. Hosted portals automatically personalize the content generated from
their modules to provide a personalized experience to their users. In this regard they have remained
true to the original goals of the earlier corporate Web portals. Emerging new classes of Internet
portals called Cloud Portals are showcasing the power of API (Application Programming Interface)
rich software systems leveraging SOA (service-oriented architecture, Web services, and custom data
exchange) to accommodate machine to machine interaction creating a more fluid user experience for
connecting users spanning multiple domains during a given "session". Leading cloud portals like
Nubifer Cloud Portal showcase what is possible using Enterprise Mashup and Web Service
integration approaches to building cloud portals.
Domain-specific portals
A number of portals have come about which are specific to a particular domain, offering access
to related companies and services; a prime example of this trend would be the growth in property
portals that give access to services such as estate agents, removal firm, and solicitors that offer
conveyancing. Along the same lines, industry-specific news and information portals have appeared,
such as the clinical trials-specific portal.
9.11 MY YAHOO
My Yahoo! is a customizable start page or personal web portal which enables users to combine
personalized Yahoo! features, content feeds and information onto a single page. iGoogle is similar to
My Yahoo. On September 19, 2013 a tablet oriented redesigned version of My Yahoo was launched.
On January 31, 2014, this new version was rolled out to all users.
As of the week of March 3, 2014 Yahoo users are being informed that the localized versions of
My Yahoo are being discontinued and users must log-on to the US edition (my.yahoo.com) where
most of the users' settings and applications will be migrated to so they can continue using My Yahoo
after March 24, 2014.
While the appearance, layout and content of the main Yahoo homepage is standard, My Yahoo
offers a more customizable experience. On it users can for example, apply themes, add their favorite
sites as news sources, add widgets (among others) to display content like Weather and a glance to the
users' Yahoo! Mail and GMail inboxes, rearrange the layout controlling the type and amount of
content on each tab and add additional tabs to the page.
9.12 SEARCH STRATEGIES

A search engine maintains the following processes in near real time:
• Web crawling
• Indexing
• Searching
Web search engines get their information by web crawling from site to site. The "spider" checks for
the standard filename robots.txt, addressed to it, before sending certain information back to be
indexed depending on many factors, such as the titles, page content, JavaScript, Cascading Style
Sheets (CSS), headings, as evidenced by the standard HTML markup of the informational content, or
its metadata in HTML meta tags.
Indexing means associating words and other definable tokens found on web pages to their domain
names and HTML-based fields. The associations are made in a public database, made available for
web search queries. A query from a user can be a single word. The index helps find information
relating to the query as quickly as possible.
Some of the techniques for indexing, and caching are trade secrets, whereas web crawling is a
straightforward process of visiting all sites on a systematic basis.
Between visits by the spider, the cached version of page (some or all the content needed to render it)
stored in the search engine working memory is quickly sent to an inquirer. If a visit is overdue, the
search engine can just act as a web proxy instead. In this case the page may differ from the search
terms indexed. The cached page holds the appearance of the version whose words were indexed, so a
cached version of a page can be useful to the web site when the actual page has been lost, but this
problem is also considered a mild form of linkrot.
Typically when a user enters a query into a search engine it is a few keywords. The index already has
the names of the sites containing the keywords, and these are instantly obtained from the index. The
real processing load is in generating the web pages that are the search results list: Every page in the
entire list must be weighted according to information in the indexes. Then the top search result item
requires the lookup, reconstruction, and markup of the snippets showing the context of the keywords
matched. These are only part of the processing each search results web page requires, and further
pages (next to the top) require more of this post processing.
Beyond simple keyword lookups, search engines offer their own GUI- or command-driven operators
and search parameters to refine the search results. These provide the necessary controls for the user
engaged in the feedback loop users create by filtering and weighting while refining the search results,
given the initial pages of the first search results. For example, from 2007 the Google.com search
engine has allowed one to filter by date by clicking "Show search tools" in the leftmost column of the
initial search results page, and then selecting the desired date range. It's also possible to weight by
date because each page has a modification time. Most search engines support the use of the boolean
operators AND, OR and NOT to help end users refine the search query. Boolean operators are for
literal searches that allow the user to refine and extend the terms of the search. The engine looks for
the words or phrases exactly as entered. Some search engines provide an advanced feature called
proximity search, which allows users to define the distance between keywords. There is also concept-
based searching where the research involves using statistical analysis on pages containing the words
or phrases you search for. As well, natural language queries allow the user to type a question in the
same form one would ask it to a human. A site like this would be ask.com.

The usefulness of a search engine depends on the relevance of the result set it gives back. While there
may be millions of web pages that include a particular word or phrase, some pages may be more
relevant, popular, or authoritative than others. Most search engines employ methods to rank the
results to provide the "best" results first. How a search engine decides which pages are the best
matches, and what order the results should be shown in, varies widely from one engine to another.
The methods also change over time as Internet usage changes and new techniques evolve. There are
two main types of search engine that have evolved: one is a system of predefined and hierarchically
ordered keywords that humans have programmed extensively. The other is a system that generates an
"inverted index" by analyzing texts it locates. This first form relies much more heavily on the
computer itself to do the bulk of the work.
Most Web search engines are commercial ventures supported by advertising revenue and thus some
of them allow advertisers to have their listings ranked higher in search results for a fee. Search
engines that do not accept money for their search results make money by running search related ads
alongside the regular search engine results. The search engines make money every time someone
clicks on one of these ads
We now demonstrate an easy-to-follow process on employing search engines and subject directories
for determining what you need on the web. Distinctively, this course will enable you to do the
following useful actions:
• Use subject directories and depict the difference between a subject directory and a search
engine.
• Use entailed and full Boolean logic, phrase searching, truncation and field searching
efficaciously.
• Discover key concepts, synonyms and variant word forms in your search topic.
• Use key search engines efficaciously, including Bing, Google, Yahoo! ,Ask, Blekko,
Dogpile, DuckDuckGo and similar others. Use meta-search engines.
• Use specialty databases when required.
• Employ search strategies and techniques in a scavenger hunt exercise.
For best results, brush up the topics as per the above listed order serially. In each topic section, the
spotlight will be on key websites and/or furnish exercises for practicing search techniques. When you
click on a link, the tutorial will modify to a frams interface. Specific instructions for exercising a
technique or navigating a site will come along in the left frame. The actual search engine or subject
directory will come out in the right frame. Use the search engine or directory and the proposed
exercises to exercise the search technique.
9.13 BEYOND THE BASICS: THINKING CRITICALLY

ABOUT WEBSITES
Not all websites are beneficial informants. Traditionally, it was costly to publish information, so
books, magazines and other communication media were usually reasonably accurate. Materials were
often juried by authorities in the relevant field; now anyone who can use a website find it easy to
circulate faulty and/or one-sided information. Users must gain skills to be able to understand them to
become vital consumers of information. When looking at a website it is crucial to hold respective
criteria in mind as is listed as follows:

• Source: Who is the author or producer of the website? Dies the site’s maker have cognition of
their field?
• Date: When was the website produced? Is the information modified periodically? Are links to
other sites maintained updated?
• Content: Is the content accurate and updated? In the content applicable to the search topic? Is
the reportage of the information comprehensive? Does the site have an apparent bias?
• Design: Is the site easy to pilot? Does the design raise the site or make it more difficult to
use?
9.14 EVALUATION OF INFORMATION SOURCES

The web offers much information and data from all over the world on the Internet. And since these
information is fairly ‘anonymous’, it is necessary to develop skills to evaluate what you find. When
you use a research or a library, the books, journals and other resources are already evaluated by
scholars, publishers and librarians. However, when you use the web, none of this applies; there are no
filters. Since anyone can write a web page, documents of the widest range of quality, written by
authors if the widest range of authority, are available on an even playing field. Excellent resources
reside alongside the most dubious. Here are some criteria by which you assess information found on
the Internet.
The following factors should be considered when evaluating information in the Internet:
• Authorship: It is perhaps the major criterion used in evaluating information. When you look
for information with some type of critical value, then you may know the basis of the authority
with which the author speaks.
• Publishing body: It also helps evaluate any type of document you may read. This usually
means that the author’s manuscript has undergone screening to meet the standards or aims of
the organization that serves as publisher.
• Point of view: It reminds you that information is rarely neutral. Since data is used in selective
ways to from information, it generally represents a point of view. Every writer wants to prove
his point and will use the data and information that assists him in doing so. When evaluating
information found on the Internet, it is important to examine who is providing the
‘information’ you are reading and what might be his/her point of view are bias.
• Reference to other sources: It refers to the context in which the author situates his or her
work. This reveals what the author knows about his or her discipline and its practices.
Reference to other works also allows you to evaluate the author’s scholarship or knowledge
of trends in the area under discussion.
• Verifiability: It is an important part of the evaluation process, especially when you are
reading the work of an unfamiliar author presented by an unfamiliar organization, or
presented by an unfamiliar organization, or presented in a non-traditional way.
• Currency: It refers to the timeliness of information. In printed documents the date of
publication is the first indicators of currency. For some types of information, currency is not
an issue, but for other types, however, it is extremely important.

9.15 HOW TO BE NET SAVVY
Know the difference between e-mail addresses and website addresses:
Anything with an @ sign (i.e., webmaster @nwrel.org, George@mycats.com) is an e-mail

address.
Anything with www or http is a Web address (i.e. http://www.nwrel.org,

www.vikaspublishinghouse.com)
Deal with the dreaded 404 errors: File Not Found:
Check your spelling, i.e. web addresses must be accurate.
Start going back in the URL – you may be able to find what you need by backing up directories.
Be E-mail savvy:
Know your e-mail address – if you use gmail, your full e-mail address is
yourscreenname@gmail.com.
Be careful about who you give your e-mail address to – double – check that you are not
signing up for any undesirable advertisement.
Free e-mail accounts are available from a variety of sources on the Web – try www.yahoo.com
or www.gmail.com – use these as a ‘throwaway’ e-mail address for web forms.
If a web page does not come up the whole way or is taking abnormally long to load, try the
Refresh or Reload button – sometimes this will load the page better.
Plug-ins are extra programs that help your computer run or view extra programs on the Web.
Some of the most popular plug-ins are:
Adobe Acrobat PDF Files. This plug-in permits you to look at the need to hold back the master
formatting. Examples of PDF files are tax forms, registration forms, etc. Find the plug-in at http://
www.adobe.com.
Real Video Files: This permits you to look out videos and listening audio clips on the Web. Do
not be tricked into buying the Real Player Plus- the plain old Real Player is free and does everything
you need it to. Download it at http://www.real.com.
QuickTime files. This is another popular formal for Web video Download it at
http://www.apple.com
Zip files: Files with a zip extension are files that have been squeezed to save space. To view these
files, you must ‘unzip’ them by using software that restores them to their original size. Try http://
www.7-zip.org download the free version of 7-zip your files.

Most company websites use the format: http://www.companyname.com – try this before
using a search engine or directory.
Viruses are everywhere. Be careful about files you download from the Web or that you receive
attached to e-mails. Opening an e-mail cannot infect your computer, but opening a file attached to an
e-mail can surely do that. Make sure you have got virus protection software installed (Norton and
MacAfee make the two best products), and that you update their ‘virus definition’ files at least every
month.
9.16 SUMMARY
• A directory on the web is known as a web directory or link directory. It facilitates in
connecting to other websites and categorizing those links.
• A web directory is not essentially a search engine and does not exhibit numbers of web pages
on the basis of keywords.
• A web directory prepares websites by subject and this is usually done by humans and not any
software. The searcher looks at sites prepared in a series of menus and categories.
• Search engines utilize some time in going along alterations and enhancements and getting to
know their particular strengths.
• A program that complies or ‘crawl’, links throughout the Internet, catching content from sites
and adding to search engine indexes is known as a spider (also known as a robot or a
crawler).
• Spiders only can conform to links from on website to the other and from one page to another.
• AltaVista is a crawler-based search engine, intending to send out software programs called
crawlers or spiders, to search the Web and index websites.
• Excite is a medium to large-scale search engine and portal that is increasing its popularity.
• Lycos has been around a long time in Internet years: and has developed from allowing for its
own search results to altering on Ask.com.
• A web crawler is a computer program that surfs the web in an organized and automatized
mode.
• ProFusion is a META search engine on steroids. It searches up to ten search engines in
analogue and adds the results.
• A web portal, also known as a links page, demonstrates information from diverse origins in a
unified way.
• Yahoo! Was established by Jerry Yang and David Filo in January 1994 and was incorporated
on 1 March 1995.
• Snap is a new form of search engine; it not only goes out and recovers results for you, but the
more people use it, the smarter it gets.
• Search engines are popular tools for identifying web pages, but they often provide thousands
of results. Search engines crawl throughout the Web and log the words from the web pages
they encounter in their databases.
• Verity has got some powerful operators and modifiers present for searching (for more
information, see Operators and modifiers). However, users might only use the most basic
operators (AND and OR, and the modifier NOT).
• In most search engines, you can deputize a character as a backup for any word or letter in a
search phrase. This is known as a ‘wildcard’.
• Not all websites are beneficial information. Traditionally, it was costly to publish

information, so books, magazines, and other communication media were usually reasonably
accurate.
9.17 KEY TERMS

• Web directory: A directory on the web is known as a web directory or link directory. It
facilitates in connecting to other websites and categorizing those links.
• Spider: A program that complies or ‘crawl’, limks throughout the Internet , catching content
from sites and adding it to search engine indexes.
• AltaVista: A crawler-based search engine, intending to send out software programs called
crawlers or spiders, to search the Web and index websites.
• Web crawler: A computer program that surfs the web in an organized and automatized more.
• FAST crawler: A circularized crawler, used by Fast Search & Transfer and a general
description of its architecture is present.
• ProFusion: A META search engine on steroids. It searches up to ten search engine in
analogue and add the results.
• Portal: A web portal, also known as a links page, demonstrates information from diverse
origins in a unified way.
• Snap: A new form of search engine. It not only goes out and recovers results for you, but the
more people use it, the smarter it gets.
• Excite: A medium/large-scale search engine and portal that is increasing its popularity.
9.18 END QUESTIONS

1. What are human-edited directories?
2. What are the search features of AltaVista?
3. What are web crawler architectures?
4. What do you understand by portals?
5. What are the search strategies adopted by browsers?
6. What is a web directory? Explain how it works.
7. What are crawlers and spiders? Explain.
8. Discuss meta-search engines.
9. Explain the features of Snap?
10. What are search strategies? How are AND, OR and NOT operators used in net
searching?
9.19 REFERENCES
Halsall, Fred. (2005). Computer Networking and the Internet, 5th edition Reading, MA: Addison
Wesley.
Pye, Claire and Ruth Cassidy. (2004). Internet Magic (Computer Wizards).
Landon: Franklin Watts.
Galla,Preston. (2006). How the Internet Works, 8th edition. London: QUE.

UNIT 10: MICROSOFT WORD XP 2007
10.0 BEFORE WE BEGIN

In this unit, you will learn about the basics of Microsoft Word (MS Word) 2007. The most
significant areas of development In Window XP over Windows 2000 are the management and
administration of desktop. Apart from that, features, such as remote assistance and system restore
reduce the administrative cost for windows exorbitantly by eliminating the need for desktop support
visits and manual restoration of the system.
This unit will teach you how to work with MS word 2007, right from opening a new document to
clicking options, highlighting text, and exiting MS Word. You will also learn about the basic features
of MS Word, such as using the backspace key, inserting text, using the overtype button, learn how to
make text bold, underline and italicize, and so on. In addition, you will learn some more basic
features, such as opening file, cut and paste, spell check, and so on Further, you will learn to work
with paragraphs, such as word and line spacing, alignment saving documents, and so on. This unit
also introduces you to tab key, bulleting numbering printing, and how to work with tables.
10.1 UNIT OBJECTIVES:

After going through this unit, you will be able to :
• Explain the features of Microsoft Word

• Elaborate about different types of document view.
• Explain the basic features of MS Word XP
• Describe different options in Microsoft Word
• Discuss the uses of this software
10.2 MICROSOFT WORD

Basic Mouse Operations
You would need certain basic operation to perform any task on computers. Let us learn them.
Steps when asked to click:
• Point to the item using a mouse.

• Press the left button of the mouse only once.
Double-clicking on an item can be done as follows:

• Quickly press the left button of the mouse twice.
Right-clicking can be done as follows:

• Press the right button of the mouse.
Hover operation is performed by taking the cursor to the icon or hypertext (text where other
document or program may be accessed) and wait while the curser changes its look. Usually a message
like ‘tool tip is shown when we hover over such icon or hypertext.
Beginning Microsoft Word 2007.
To begin with Microsoft Word, first open Microsoft Word: The screen looks like as shown in
Figure 10.01.
Fig 10.01: Opening screen of Word
In order to close the New Document pane, click the X (cross) mark in the upper right corner of
the pane. The screen will just look like the one as follows:
10.2.1 Title Bar
This section will help you get more familiar with the Microsoft Word screen. Let us start with the
Title bar (see above) located at the very top of the screen. On this bar, the name of the document
which is currently worked upon is displayed. At the top of the screen, the name of the document is
displayed, i.e. name by which the document is saved, or if it is an unknown document then Microsoft
Word will show it as Document 1 or Document 2, etc.
10.2.2 Menu Bar
The Menu bar (see above) is the bar that is usually found directly below the Title bar. Menus are
displayed in the menu bar. The left-hand side corner of the menu bar begins with the Office icon
and is followed by Home, Insert, Page Layout, References, Mailings, Review, View (and other drop

down menus depending on plug-in installed by you) in this order. With the help of menus instruction
is given to the software, a drop-down menu (for older versions of Office) opens when the mouse is
placed on the menu option and left mouse button is clicked. In Office 2007, instead of drop down
menu, you have ribbon which holds commands. The arrow keys have no role to play in ribbon. You
have to click on the options or menus which you want to select. See the following figure for example
of ‘Insert’ option ribbon.
Fig 10.02: Ribbon corresponding to ‘insert’ menu
In order to select an option, click on the option. Additional options on the menu item can be seen
as inverted triangle, for example below Table icon. The icons showed in grey color are not available.
Example: The following example demonstrates using of MS Word menu for selecting a Font
• Click on the Home option on the Menu bar.

• Various items can be seen above ‘Font’ including Font type, Font size, bold,
italic,underline, highlight, font color options.
• See following figure for actual icons.
Fig. 10.00 Font icons
Keyboard Shortcut to menu commands is provided by the toolbars as ‘tool-tips’. Just ‘hover’
the cursor over the icon and the ‘tool-tip showing the shortcut key can be seen. For example
hover the cursor over Bold icon seen in above figure and you will see Bold (Ctrl+B) as tool tip.
10.2.3 Ruler
The ruler (see Figure below) used for changing the format of the document is generally found
below the main toolbars. Steps to display the ruler are as follows:
1. Click on the View option on the Menu bar.

2. Select Ruler checkbox.
3. The ruler will appear below the toolbox ribbon.
Figure 10.00 Ruler
10.2.4 Different Types of Document View

There are five views which can display your document in MS Word. They are known as draft,
outline, Web Layout, Fullscreen Reading Layout and Print Layout. You can select these at the
bottom right area of the sceen, next to zoom setting:
Fig 10.03: Document Views at the Status Bar (Bottom area)
Print Layout
The view that shows the document as it will look when it is printed is the Print Layout View.
Full Screen Reading view
If you would like to be able to see more of your document for reading purposes, try using the
Full Screen Reading view. To turn this view on, simply press the Full Screen Reading button on the
View tab on the Ribbon. You will notice that the Ribbon disappears when Full Screen Reading view
is enabled. Hiding the Ribbon provides you with a full screen view to make it easier to read
documents, which is especially helpful on smaller displays like laptops. However, your ability to edit
the document is limited in this view.
To exit Full Screen mode, click Close in the upper right corner of the screen, or press the Esc key
on your keyboard.
Web Layout
The view which enables to view the document as it would appear in a browser such as Internet
Explorer is the Web Layout View.
Outline Layout
This view displays the document in the outline form. The headings can be displayed without the
text. If a heading is moved then the accompanying text moves along with it.
Draft View
In Word 2007 Draft view is intended to be used for quick editing of the text in your Word
documents. Because it is designed for text editing, certain elements of the document are not visible in
Draft view such as headers and footers. Also, page breaks are shown as a dotted line to maximize the
editing area. This is a perfect view for proofreading your documents.

You can also select the view layout using ‘Document Views’ section under the View tab.
Before moving to the next section be sure that you are in the Print Layout view.
10.2.5 Area for Text
Fig 10.04: Text area
Text area (see above Figure) is the large area just below the ruler. Document or data can be typed
in this area. There is a blinking vertical line in the upper left corner of the text area which is the cursor
that marks the insertion point. As you start typing, the cursor moves along with your work. The end
of the document is marked by the horizontal line next to the cursor.
10.2.6 Exiting Word
Typically, you would save your document with any name or the type of subject before exiting. As
this section does not require any text to enter or save, you might have nothing to save. You can exit
the Word by clicking on Office icon (Top Left screen) and clicking on Close icon.
10.3 IMPORTANT OPTIONS

This section teaches you how to set up your computer so that you can learn the options that
follow successfully. It also provides you with the background information on MS Word. To begin this
section, open the MS Word document.
10.3.2 Options
An introduction to various features of the MS Word screen is as follows:

Status Bar
Fig 10.05: Status Bar
The Status bar (see figure above) is the bar that appears at the very bottom of the screen and
provides information in sequential order as the current page, current section and the page you are
working on and the total number of pages, inches from the top of the page, current line number and
current column number. Other options like turn on the Record mode or track changes, the Extension
mode, the Overtype mode and the Spelling and Grammar check can also be seen in the status bar.
Figure 10.00 The Horizontal & Vertical scroll bar
The Horizontal scroll bar (see above figure) is located above the Status bar and the Vertical scroll
bar is located along the right side of the screen. The Horizontal and Vertical scroll bars, enable to
move up and down or across the window or the document simply by pressing the icons located on the
scroll bars. In order to move up and down the document, click and drag the Vertical scroll bar up and
down and to move back and forth across the document, click and drag the Horizontal scroll bar.
Nonprinting type of characters
There are certain types of characters that do not print but do affect the document layout.
To show these charecters select ‘Home’ Tab. The top part of the sceen looks like this:
Fig 10.06: Tool ribbon under Home tab

Now choose ¶ under Paragraph section on the Toolbar ribbon. When this option is selected lot of
non-printable charecters can be seen on your documents. It may be distracting if you are writing long
text and everything is going on smoothly. However, if anything gets wrong, you may turn on this
option. For the following sections, you should opt to see these nonprinting characters onscreen. Most
of them are as follows:
¶Denotes the end of paragraph.
A dot in the centre a space like this:
shows page break.
Recently used file list
Fig 10.07: Recently used file list
If you are unable to find the recently used files, you can use Recent Documents option which is
available when you press the Office icon . You can choose any file on this list by clicking on it.
Setting options
You can set the various options by clicking on the Office icon . Choose
below the list of recent files. You will see the following screen,

Fig 10.08 Word Option has a number of tabs like “popular”, “display”, “Proofing” etc.
10.3.3 Selecting the Text by Highlighting

You will be asked to highlight text throughout these sections. The following methods can be used
to highlight text:
Highlighting by using the shift key and arrow keys
• Keep the cursor before or after the text which needs to be highlighted and click the
left button of the mouse.
• Press the shift key, which will serve as an ‘anchor’ showing where the text you wish
to highlight begins or ends.
• Press the appropriate arrow key unit the entire text is highlighted. For example, the
left arrow key should be used to move to the left or the right arrow key should be
used to move to the right. In order to highlight one line at a time the up or down
arrow key can be used and press Esc to remove the anchor.
Highlighting by using the mouse
• Keep the cursor before or after the text which needs to be highlighted.
• Hold down the left button of the mouse.
• Move the mouse in the required direction like left, right, up or down until the text is
highlighted.
10.3.4 Choosing Menu Commands by Using the Alt Key

Generally, while selecting items from the menu bar, you will be asked to click or highlight the
menu item. There are several ways to do the same task when you are using MS Word. However, you
can also select a menu option by the following steps:
• Press the Alt key for a long time, the Screen look like this:
Fig 10.09: When you have pressed the Alt key for a long time the Menu bar looks like this
Press the letter corresponding to the Menu or Tab which you want to select. For example suppose
I wish to select Review tab, I will do this by holding Alt key till the Toolbar shows various keys and
then typing R. When I have performed this operation for a number of times, I would memorise the
‘Alt-shortcuts’ and will type Alt+R whenever I wish to select Review.
10.3.5 Shortcut Notations

The shortcut notations can be made out from the document by a key name followed by a dash and
a letter means to press the key while pressing the letter. For example, Alt-I means you should press
the Alt key while pressing ‘I’ Notation of the above demonstration would read as follows:
• Press Alt-B
• Press Alt-I
• Press Enter
• Press Alt-O,P
Typists usually prefer using the keys.
10.3.6 Starting a New Paragraph

In order to start to new paragraph in MS Word, Press the Enter key. When you type in MS Word
document, you need not press a key to move to a new line as you do when typing with a typewriter.
10.3.7 Exiting Microsoft Word

Typically, you would save your document with any name or the type of subject before exiting. As
this section does not require any text to enter or save, you might have nothing to save. You can exit
the Word by clicking on Office icon (Top Left screen) and clicking on Exit Word
icon.

What is menu bar?
What is the function of ruler?
What are the various types of document views?
What do you understand by text area?
What is the status bar and how it is helpful for the user?
10.4 MICROSOFT WORD: BASIC FEATURES

This section covers typing, the backspace key, the delete key, inserting the required text, making
the text bold, underlining the text and italicizing the text for specific effects. To start up with this
section, open a new MS Word document.
10.4.1 Typing and Using the Backspace Key

The following example will teach you how to enter and delete texts. In order to enter some text,
simply type as you would if you were using a typewriter. To capitalize some alphabet, press the Shift
key while typing the letter. Use the Backspace key to delete text which is not required. There is no
need to press Enter to start a new line. MS Word can automatically wrap at the end of the line. Press
Enter to start a new paragraph.
Example:
• Type the following sentence:

• YCMOU has a very large office.
• Now delete the word ‘office’. This can be done either using the arrow keys or the
mouse. Place the cursor between the period and the ‘e’ in’ office’.
• Press the backspace key until the word ‘office’ is deleted.
• Now type campus. The sentence should now read: YCMOU has a very large campus.
10.4.2 Delete Key

First, highlight the text you wish to delete, then press the Delete key. In this way, you can delete
the text by using the Delete key.
Example:
Now delete the word ‘very’ from the sentence that you have just typed.
• First highlight the word ‘very’ and place the cursor before the alphabet ‘v’ in the
word ‘very’ and press the Shift key. Then press the right arrow key until the word
‘very’ is highlighted.
• Press the Delete key. So the sentence should now read. YCMOU has a large campus.

10.4.3 Inserting Text
You can insert text in the document. Earlier versions of Word required to press ‘Insert’ key.
However, Word 2007 does not require this by default. You can put the curser anywhere where you
wish to insert text.
You can test if the default setting has been disturbed by anyone on your computer. Put the cursor
on a sentence, for example:
“This is a test sentence.”
Now try to insert a new word “new” between “a” and “test” by placing cursor between thse two
words and typing “new”.
You should get the following sentence: “This is a new test sentence.”
If this does not happen like this and you get the following result:
“This is a newt sentence.”
This would mean that the “default” setting has been changed by someone.
You have to do the following:
• Click Office Button.

• Click Word Option
• Click on Advanced tab on the left pane.
• Under Editing Options, make sure that the Use the Insert key to control overtype
mode is unchecked and Use overtype mode is unchecked as shown below:
•
You should be able to insert text freely now.
10.4.4. Overtype
You can also type over the current text or replace the current text with new text simultaneously
inserting and deleting it. However, you must be in the Overtype mode. Carry out the following steps
to change to the Overtype mode.
• Click Office Button.

• Click Word Option
• Click on Advanced tab on the left pane.
• Under Editing Options, make sure that the Use the Insert key to control overtype
mode is checked and Use overtype mode may be unchecked as shown below:

•
• Click on OK
Under this setting, you may get into “Insert” and “Overwrite” mode by using Insert key. If you
press once this key, the mode will change from “Insert” to “Overwrite” and vice versa.
Example :
Type a test sentence like this. “YCMOU has a very large campus”
1. First place the cursor before the letter ‘v’ in ‘very’.

2. Then type the word huge.
3. The sentence should now read as :
‘YCMOU has a huge large campus.’
10.4.5 Bold, Underline and Italic
You can make the text bold, underlined or italicized using Word. You can also bold, underline,
and italicize a single piece of text. In the following example, you will learn three different ways for
making text bold, italicizing it or underlining by using Word. You will learn to make bold italic or
underline text by using the menu option, an icon or the keys.
Example:
Pressing the Enter key starts a new paragraph. Hence, press the Enter key at the end each of the
following lines and start a new paragraph
Icon: Bold, italicize and underline these words all three regular.
Keys: Bold, italicize and underline these words all three regular.
Making words bold by using an icon
1. On the line that begins with ‘Icon’, highlight the word ‘Bold’. This can be done by
placing the cursor before the letter ‘B’ in ‘Bold’. Press the shift key and then press the
right arrow key of the keyboard until the entire word is highlighted.
2. Click on the Bold icon B on the toolbar.
3. Anywhere in the Text area click to remove the highlighting.
Making words bold by using the keys
1. Use the line starting with “Keys”. While using keyboard in order to make the word
‘Bold’ bold first highlight the word. This can be done by placing the cursor before the
letter ‘B’ in; Bold’. Press the Shift key and then press the right arrow key until the
entire word is highlighted.
2. Ctrl-B is the shortcut for the keyboard to make a character bold. You can do this by
Pressing down the Ctrl key while pressing the letter B.
3. In this way you can click anywhere in the Text area to remove the highlighting.
Italicizing words by using on Icon
1. On the line that begins with ’Icon’ highlight the word ‘Italicize’. This can be done by
placing the cursor before the letter ‘I’ in ‘Italicize’ Press the shift key and then press
the right arrow key of the keyboard until the entire word is highlighted.
2. Click in the Italic icon I on the toolbar.
Italicizing words by using keys
1. By using keyboard you can ‘Italicize’ the text by highlighting the word. This can be
done by placing the cursor before the letter ‘I’ in ‘Italicize’. Press the shift key and
then press the right arrow key until the entire word is highlighted.
2. The shortcut for making characters italic is by Pressing Ctrl-I. This can be done by
holding down the Ctrl key while pressing the letter ‘I’.
3. In this way, you can click anywhere in the Text area to remove the highlighting.
You can underline any text when using Word.
Underlining words by using the icon
1. On the line that begins with ‘Icon’ highlight the words ‘Underline these words.’
2. Click on the underline icon U on the toolbar. You will get a single line underline.
Underlining words by using the keys
1. On the line that begins with ‘Keys’, highlight the words ‘Underline these words.’
2. The shortcut key is Press Ctrl-U, (This can be done by pressing down the Ctrl key and
pressing the alphabet U). You will get a single underline.
3. In this way you can click anywhere In the Text area to remove the highlighting.
All three using icon
1. On the line that begins with ‘icon’. Highlight the words ‘All three’.
2. Click on the Italic icon on the toolbar.
3. Click on the Bold icon on the toolbar.

4. Click on the Underline icon on the toolbar.
5. In this way, you can click on all the three icons anywhere in the Text area to remove the
highlighting.
All three by using by keys
1. On the line that begins with the ‘Keys,’ highlight the words ‘All three’.
2. Press Ctrl-B in order to make any character bold.
3. Press Ctrl-I in order to make any character italic.
4. Press Ctrl-U in order to underline any character.
5. In this way you can click anywhere in the Text area & remove the highlighting.
10.4.6 Save file
Files must be saved as you can recall them letter if you wish. You must give your file a name
before saving. Following are the instructions given below to save your file and close Word.
If you have not given your document any name, the Word will give it a name called
“Document1”, “Document2” etc. To save the file, press Ctrl-S, or click on the icon which looks like a
floppy disk at the top left next to Office button. The Word will ask you to give it a name and a path
by showing you a window like the following:
Fig 10.10: Save As dialog box
You may change the path where you wish to save the file and give it a name which you may
remember and associate with the purpose of the document. For example, ‘test’ tells me that this
document was prepared to test something. After entering the filename, you click on Save.
To exit the program, you may click on (X) at the top right of the window. If you have made
changes and not saved, the Word would ask if you wish to save changes.

10.5 SOME BASIC FEAUTRES
The following features are covered in this section: cut, copy, paste, AutoText, spell check, find,
replace and fonts. To start this sections first open the MS Word.
10.5.1 Open File

In order to continue working on a file that you have previously saved, you must open the file,
Steps to open file you used in previous section.
• Click Office button. Click on Open icon.

• Always make sure that the folder you have noted during the previous section display
in the Look In field.
• Click on the file named ‘Word 3.doc.
• Click on Open. The file which you had created during the previous section appears.
You may also use Ctrl-O.
10.5.2 Cut and Paste

In the MS Word document, you can cut text from one area of a document and save the same text
elsewhere in the document. When the text is cut from a place, it automatically is stored on the
clipboard. In the similar way, when you copy text, it is also stored on the clipboard. Any information
stored on the clipboard stays there until new information is either cut or copied. Each time you cut or
copy any text, you replace the old information on the clipboard with whatever you have just cut or
copied. Clipboard can be pasted as often as you like.
Example
Cut by using the icon
1. Type the following:

I want to move. I am content where I am.
2. Highlight the sentence ‘I want to move.’
3. Click the marked Cut icon as shown.

4. Now your text should read as:
I am content where I am.’
Paste by using the icon
1. Place the cursor after the period in the sentence.

‘I am content where I am.’
2. Leave a space using a space bar.
3. Click the Paste icon as shown.

‘I am content where I am. I want to move.’
Cut by using keys
1. Type the following using the keyboard.

I want to move. I am content where I am.
2. Highlight the text ‘I want to move.’
3. Press Ctrl-X to cut the text from the document.
‘I am content where I am.’
Paste by using keys
1. Place the cursor after the period in the sentence:
I am content where I am.’
2. Leave a space using a spacebar.

3. Press Ctrl-V to paste the text on the document.
I am content where I am. I want to move.’
10.5.3 Copy and Paste

In the MS Word, text can be copied from one area of the document and pasted anywhere in the
document as the cut data and copied data is stored on the clipboard.
Example:
Copy by using the icon

You will want to copy me. One of me is all you need.
2. Highlight the text ‘You will want to copy me.’
3. Click on the Copy icon as shown.
Paste by using the icon
1. Place the cursor after the period in the sentence: ‘One of me is all you need.’
2. Leave a space using a spacebar.

3. Click on the Paste icon as shown.
‘You will want to copy me. One of me is all you need, You will want to copy me.’
Copy by using keys

You will want to copy me. One of me is all you need.
2. Highlight the text ‘You will want to copy me.’
3. Press Ctrl-c to copy the text.
Paste by using keys:
1. Place the cursor after the period in the sentence ‘One of me is all you need.’
2. Leave a space using the spacebar.
3. Press Ctrl-V paste the text at the desired place.
‘You will want to copy me. One of me is all you need. You will want to copy
me.’
10.5.4 Spell Check

MS Word automatically checks your spelling and grammar as you type in. Spelling
errors are shown by a red wavy line under the word and the grammatical errors are shown by
a green wavy line under the error. In order to spell check your entire document, press F7 or
click the spelling and grammar icon under Review tab. You can spell check part of your
document by highlighting the area you want to spell check. Then press F7 or use the Spelling
and Grammar icon.
Example:
1. Include all the errors and type the following sentence exactly as shown. Open the
door for Mayrala. She is a teacher from the town of Ridgement.
2. Highlight the text ‘Open the door for Mayrala. She is a teacher from the town of
Ridgemont.’
3. Press F7 using the keyboard or click the Spelling icon.
4. ‘The’ is misspelled, so it will be highlighted on the screen and noted in the Not in
Dictionary box.
5. Word suggests correct spelling and these suggestions are found in the Suggestions
box.

6. To change the word to the correct spelling, make sure ‘the’ is highlighted in the
Suggestions box. Click Change.
7. The name ‘Mayrala’ is not in the dictionary, but it is correct. Click Ignore Once to
leave ‘mayrala’ in the document with its current spelling.
8. Ridgemont’ is not found in the dictionary. If you frequently use a word which is not
found in the dictionary, then you should add that word to the dictionary by pressing
the Add to Dictionary button. Word will then recognize the word the next time it
finds while checking spellings. Click Add to Dictionary so that it can be added in the
dictionary and can be used when required.
9. When the following appears on your screen: ‘Word finished checking the selection.
Do you want to continue checking the remainder of the document?’
10. Click on No if the spell check of the document is done and if you want Word to spell
check to continue the entire document, click on Yes.
10.5.5 Find and Replace

The find command is used to find a particular word or piece of text, simply execute the Find
command (Ctrl-F) or use Find icon on the Home tab if you want to search the entire
document. In order to limit your search to a selected area, highlight that area and then execute the
Find command.
After you have found the word or piece of text you are searching for, you can replace the new
text by using Replace command (Ctrl-F and use the Replace tab in the following window) or using
Replace icon on Home tab.
Example:
Find – using the keys or icon
1. Type the following :

Monica is from Easton. She lives on the east side of town. Her daughter attends
Eastern High School.
2. Highlight the text: ‘Monica is from Easton. She lives on the east side of town. Her
daughter attends Eastern High School.’
3. Press Ctrl-F or click on Find icon (Home tab)
4. Type the text ‘east’ (without inverted commas) in the Find What field.
5. Click on Find Next.
Note that the ‘East’ in Easton is highlighted.
Note that ‘east’ is highlighted.
Note that the ‘East’ in Eastern is highlighted.
8. Click on Find Next. The following message appears: ‘Word has finished searching
the selection. Do you want to search the remainder of the document?’

9. Click on No.
10. Click on Cancel to Exit.
Replace – using the icon or keys
1. Highlight the text ‘Monica is from Easton. She lives on the east side of town. Her
daughter attends Eastern High School.
2. Click on replace icon (Home tab) or Ctrl-F (replace tab).
3. Type ‘east’ in the Find What box. In the Replace With box, type the text west
4. Click on Find Next. Do you replace the ‘East’ in ‘Easton.’
6. Click on Replace. Word replaces the text east with west.
7. The ‘East’ in Eastern is highlighted.
8. Click on Replace and the text Eastern becomes Western.
9. The following message will appear: ‘Word has finished searching the selection. Do
you want search the remainder of the document?”.
10. Click on No.
11. Click on Close to exit.
‘Monica is from Easton. She lives on the west side of town. Her daughter attends
Western High school.’
10.5.6 Font Size:

In MS Font, the size of your font (text) can be changed. You can change fonts by using Font
icons on Home tab or using right clicking on the selected text or anywhere on the empty screen. The
Font icons look like this on Home tab:
Changing the font size is illustrated as follows:
Use of the icon and right clicking to change font size

I am the smallest. I am bigger than sam. I am the biggest.
2. Highlight the text ‘I am the smallest.’
3. Right click and a menu would appear select ‘A Font’ from the menu.
4. A window would appear.
5. Type 8 in the Size field, or click 8 in the drop down box below the Size field.
6. Click on OK.
7. Highlight the text ‘I am bigger than sam.’
8. Choose the Font size from the font size icon on the Home tab.
10. Click on OK.
11. Highlight the text ‘I am the biggest.’
12. Choose the Font size from the font size icon on the Home tab.
13. Choose the Font tab.
15. Click on OK.
16. Now your text should look like the following:
‘I am the smallest. I am bigger than sam. I am the biggest.

.
10.5.5. Fonts
In the MS Word document, you can change the font type. This feature is illustrated as follows:
Use of the menu to change the font

Arial Courier Times New Roman.
2. Highlight the font type ‘Arial’ from the box.
3. Choose the Format option > Font from the menu.
5. In the box below the Font field, click ‘Arial.’
6. Click on OK.
7. Highlight the font type ‘Courier.’
10. In the box below the Font field, click the font type ‘Courier New.’
11. Click on OK .
12. Highlight the Font type ‘Times New Roman.’
15. In the box below the Font field, click the font type ‘Times New Roman.’
16. Click on OK.
17. Now your text should look like the following.
‘Arial Courier Times New Roman.’
Use of formatting toolbar to change the font
1. Highlight ‘Arial Courier Times New Roman.’

2. Press Ctrl-spacebar. Ctrl-spacebar sets the formatting back to the default.
3. Highlight ‘Arial.’
4. Click to open the Font pull-down menu. On the formatting
toolbar.
5. Click on ‘Arial Black.’
6. Next, highlight ‘Courier’.
7. Click to open the Font pull-down menu on the Formatting
toolbar.
8. Click on ‘Courier’.
9. Next, highlight, ‘Times New Roman’.
10. Click to open the Font pull-down menu on the Formatting
toolbar.
11. Click on ‘Times New Roman’.
12. Your text should now look similar to the following:
‘Arial Courier Times New Roman.’
10.5.6. Save File
Follow the instructions below to save the File.
1. Choose File > Save As from the menu.

2. Select the correct folder in the Look In field.
3. Name your file by typing World4.doc in the File Name field.
4. Click on Save.
Click on File.
5. Highlight Exit. Press Enter.
10.6 WORKING WITH PARAGRAPHS

In this section, you will learn the various ways to format a paragraph. While formatting
paragraph, one does not need to select the whole paragraph. Placing the cursor anywhere within the
paragraph is enough to format it. After you set the format of one paragraph, subsequent paragraphs
will automatically have the same format unless you again have a change of format.
You will need paragraphs to work on, in order to perform the examples for this section. For this,
type the following Sample paragraphs exactly as shown. End each of the paragraphs where you see
the end-of-paragraph marker (¶). Press Enter once to end a paragraph, but do not leave any space
between two paragraphs. You will set the space between paragraphs during the example that will
follow. Remember, you do not need to press Enter to move to a new line while writing text – MS
Word automatically breaks the text at the end of a line and the new line starts.

Sample Paragraphs ¶
Let us use this paragraph to explain several MS Word features. Using this, we shall explain Space
Before, Space Alter and Line Spacing commands. The command Space Before tells MS Word how
much space should be left before the paragraph. Space Alter tells the software how much space is to
be left after the paragraph. The command Line Spacing is given to set the space between lines within
a paragraph. ¶
Let us use this paragraph to explain some additional features of MS Word. We shall use it to
explain the first-line indent. Using this feature, you can indent the first line of your paragraph. We
will also look at indentation. Indentation enables us to indent from the margin. Left or right, of your
document.¶
10.6.1 Space Before and Space After

The Space Before feature set the amount of space before a paragraph. Likewise the feature Space
After sets the amount of space after a paragraph. Given below are the sample paragraphs with Space
After set to 10 pt. The examples that follow give you a chance to see how the commands of Space
Before and Space After work in practice.
Space After
Sample Paragraphs ¶
Before, Space After and Line Spacing commands. The command Space Before tells MS Word how
much space should be left before the paragraph. Space After tells the software how much space is to
be left after the paragraph. The command Line Spacing is given to set the space between lines within
a paragraph.¶
Let us use this paragraph to explain some additional features of MS Word. We shall use it to
explain the first-line indent. Using this feature, you can indent the first line of your paragraph. We
will also look at indentation. Indentation enables us to indent from the margin, left or right, of our
document. ¶¶
Space Before
Select the title of the sample text: ‘Sample Paragraphs.’
1. Choose Format > Paragraph from the menu bar.

2. Choose the Indents and Spacing tab.
3. Enter 16 pt in the Before field.
4. Click on OK. Now you have 16 pt space before ‘Sample Paragraphs ‘
Space After
1. Select the entire text you typed (both paragraphs including the title):
3. Choose the indent and Spacing tab.
4. Enter pt in the After field.
5. Click on OK. Now you have 12 pt space after each paragraph.
10.6.2 Line Spacing

The Line Spacing command sets the amount of space between lines within a paragraph. Single
spacing is the default setting for a paragraph in MS Word. The spacing for each line is set to
accommodate the largest font present on that line. If the line has some smaller fonts, there will appear
to be extra space between lines above the smaller fonts. At the line space of 1.5 lines, the Line
Spacing is set to one-and-a-halftimes the single line space. For double-spaced lines, the line spacing
is set to two times the single line space.
Example:
1. Select the first paragraph you typed, starting with ‘Let us use’ and ending with
‘within’ a paragraph.
2. Choose format > Paragraph from the menu bar.
4. Click to open the drop-down menu on the Line Spacing field.
5. Click on 1.5 Lines.
6. Click on OK. Now the line spacing for the paragraph is 1.5.
10.6.3 First-Line Indent

The above example demonstrates how you can indent the left side of the first line of a paragraph,
as shown in the example given below.
Example – First – line indents
The feature of first-line indent indents the first line of a paragraph. The amount of the indent
space is specified in the By field. The remainder of the paragraph is indented by the amount we
specify in the Indentation field.
Example:
1. Select the second paragraph you typed, beginning with ‘Let us use’ and ending with
‘of our document’.
2. Choose document > Paragraph from the menu bar.
4. Click to open the drop-down menu on the Special field.
5. Choose the option First Line.
6. Enter 0.25”in the By field.
7. Click on OK
The first line of the paragraph is now indented 0.25 inches.

Note: follow the following steps to remove the first line indent:
1. Place the cursor anywhere within the paragraph.

4. Click in the Special pull-down menu.
5. Choose the option None.
6. Click on OK.
The first line of the paragraph will now have no indent.
10.6.4 Indentation
Indentation allows us to indent a paragraph from any of the two (left or right) or from both
margins. The following examples illustrate different types of indentation.
Indentation
Before, Space After and Line Spacing commands. The command Space Before tells MS Word how
much space should be left before the paragraph. Space After tells the software how much space is to
set the space between lines within a paragraph ¶
Let us use this paragraph to explain some additional features of MS

Word. Using this, we shall explain Space Before, Space After and Line
Spacing commands. The command Space Before tells MS Word how much
space should be left before the paragraph.¶
Example:
1. Select the second paragraph, beginning with ‘Let us use’ and ending with ‘of our
document.’
3. Type 1” in the Left field.
4. Type 1” in the Right field.
5. Click on OK. The paragraph is now indented 1 inch from both the left and right
margins, as shown in the example.
10.6.5 Alignment
MS Word gives us a choice of several types of alignment. Left-justified text is aligned on the left
margin. It is the default setting in MS Word.
Example:

Right-justify
1. Go back to the first paragraph you have typed, beginning with ‘Let us use …’ and
ending with’… within a paragraph’. Select the paragraph.
4. Click to open the Alignment pull-down menu.
5. Choose Right.
6. Click on OK. The paragraph is now right aligned.
Left-justify
1. Select the first paragraph you typed , ‘Let us use…’ and ending with ‘… within a
paragraph.
2. Choose Format > Paragraph fron the menu bar.
3. Choose the indents and Spacing tab.
5. Choose Left.
6. Click on OK.
The paragraph is now left aligned.
Right-justify by using short key command
1. Select the text.

2. Press Ctrl-R
The paragraph is now right aligned.
Left-justify by using short key command
1. Select the text.

2. Press Ctrl+L
The paragraph ix now left aligned.
Right-justify by using the icon
1. Select the text.

2. Click the Align Right icon.
The paragraph is now right aligned.
Left-justify by using the icon
1. Select the text

2. Click the Align Left icon.

3. The paragraph is now left aligned.
Center – using the menu
1. Select the first paragraph you typed. ‘Let us use…’ and ending with ‘… within a
paragraph’.
3. Choose the indents and Spacing tab.
5. Choose Centered.
6. Click Ok. The paragraph is now centered or centrally aligned.
Justify – using the menu
1. Select the first paragraph you typed. ‘Let us use…’ and ending with ‘… within a
paragraph.’
5. Choose justified.
6. Click on OK. The paragraph is now justified, i.e. aligned on both the left and right
margins.
Justify and center by using short key commands
1. Select the text.

2. Press Ctrl+J. The text is now justified.
3. Press ctrl+E The text is now centered or centrally aligned.
Justify and center by using the icons
1. Select the text.

2. Click on the Center icon. The text is now centrally aligned.
3. Click on the Justify icon. The text is now justified.
10.6.6 Hanging Indent

The feature hanging indent indents each line except the first line by the amount specified in the
By field, as shown in the example as follows:
Example:
Hanging Indent: The feature hanging indent indents the first line of the paragraph from the margin by

the amount specified by the Left field. The amount specified in the Left field and the
amount specified in the By field together indent all subsequent lines of the
paragraph.

The feature hanging indent indents the first line of the paragraph from the margin
by the amount specified in the Left field. The amount specified in the left field and
the amount specified in the By field together indent all subsequent lines of the
paragraph.
Select the paragraph you have just typed:
4. In the Special field, click to open the pull-down menu.
5. Choose Hanging.
6. In the By field, type 2.03.
7. Click on OK
8. Place the cursor after the colon following ‘Hanging Indent’.
9. Press the Tab Key.
10. Observe how the indentation changes.
10.6.7 Save File and Exit MS Word

Save your file by following these instructions:
1. Choose File > Save As from the menu bar

2. Specify the correct folder in the Save in field.
3. Name your file by typing Word 5 doc. In the File Name field.
4. Click on Save.
5. Choose File > Exit from the menu bar.
10.7 TAB KEY, BUTTETING NUMBERING UNDO, REDO,

PRINTING AND HELP
This section explains the Tab Key, bulleting undo, redo, printing and help. To begin this section,
open MS Word and go as per the description of each feature.
10.7.1 Tab Key

In MS Word, the default tab setting is 0.5 inch. When you press the Tab Key, the cursor moves ½
inch across the page and an arrow appears your screen. This arrow is a nonprinting character, when

you will print your document, this arrow will not be visible on the print.
Explanation
Press the Tab Key a few times, See how the cursor moves across the page. To change the default
tab setting, follow the steps listed as follows:
1. Choose Format > Tabs from the menu bar. This will open Tabs dialog box.
2. Enter 13 in the Default Tab Stops field.
3. Click on OK.
4. Press the Tab Key a few times. You will see that the cursor stops at every inch.
In MS Word, you can also set up custom tab stops. To set your tab stops to 1,5,3,5 and 63, follow
the steps listed here:
1. Choose Format > Tabs from the menu bar. This will open Tabs dialog box.
2. Enter 1.53 in the Tab Stop Position field.
3. Click on Set.
4. Enter 3.5 in the Tab Stop Position field.
5. Click on Set.
6. Enter 6 in the Tab Stop Position field.
7. Click on OK.
8. Press the Tab Key a few times. See how the cursor moves across the page.
10.7.2 Bullets and Numbering

In MS Word, you can easily create bulleted or numbered lists of items. Several bulleting and
numbering styles are available in this software, as shown in the examples below. Select the one you
wish to use. Try the examples to see how it works.
Numbering
1. This is a numbered list.

2. It has numbered items.
3. Items are numbered sequentially.
4. It can have a sublist with indented items having lowercase alphabets
a. This is a numbered sublist .
b. It can have a further sublist having roman numbers.
i. This is the third level of the numbered list.
ii. It has roman numerals.
Bulleting

• This is a bulleted list:
• It has items represented by bullets.
• Items are arranged without numbered sequence.
• It can have a sub list with indented items having different lowercase symbols.
o This is a bulleted sub list.
o It can have a further sub list having different bullet symbols.
This is the third level of the bulleted list.
It is represented by different bullets.
Example:
1. Type the following as shown.
Rose
Lily
Hollyhock
Marigold
Chinarose
2. Select the words you have just typed.
3. Choose Format > Bullets and Numbering from the menu bar.
4. Choose the Numbered tab.
5. Several list styles are available. Choose the style you want to use and click on it.
6. Click on OK.
The list is now numbered.
Follow the steps listed below to remove the numbering.
1. Select the numbered list.
3. Click on None.
4. Click on OK.
The list is no longer numbered.
Numbering by using the icon:
1. Select the list you typed.

2. Click on the Numbering icon on the Formatting toolbar.
The list is now numbered.
To remove the numbering, follow the steps listed below:
1. Select the list again.

2. Click again on the Numbering icon.
The list is no longer numbered.
Bulleting
1. Select the list you typed.


3. Click on the Bulleted tab.
4. Several list styles are available. Choose the style you want to use and click on it.
5. Click on OK.
This list is now bulleted.
To remove bulleting go by the following steps.

3. Click on None.
4. Click on OK.
The list is no longer bulleted.
Bulleting by using the icon
1. Select the list you have typed.

2. Click on the Bullets icon on the Formatting toolbar.
The list is now bulleted.
To remove the bulleting, follow the steps given below:

2. Click on the Bullets icon again.
The list is no longer bulleted.
10.7.3 Undo and Redo

Using the Undo command, we can quickly reverse most commands we have just executed.
However, if we then change our mind and decide that undoing the command was wrong, we can use
Redo.
Example:
1. Type Undo.
2. Choose Edit > Undo Typing from the menu bar. The word you typed (Undo)
disappears.
3. Choose Edit > Redo Typing from the menu bar. The typed word (Undo) reappears.
4. Highlight ‘Undo example.
5. Press Ctrl+B to Bold.
6. Choose Edit > Undo Bold from the menu bar. The bold face is removed
7. Choose Edit > Redo Bold from the menu bar. Your text is made bold again.
Undo and redo by using keys
1. Type Undo

2. Press Ctrl+Z. The word you typed (Undo) disappears.
3. Press Ctrl+Z The word you typed (Undo) reappears.
4. Select the word typed (Undo).
5. Press Ctrl+U to underline.
6. Press Ctrl+Z. The underlining is removed .
7. Press Ctrl+Y. The underline reappears.
10.7.4 Save File

Save your file by following the steps listed below:
1. Choose File > Save As from the menu bar.

2. Specify the correct folder in the Look In field.
3. Name your file by typing Word 6 doc. In the File Name field.
4. Click on Save.
Your file is saved.
10.7.5 File Close

Choose file > chose from the menu bar, Now, you are going to open a new file for the next
example.
10.7.6 Open New File

1. Choose file > New from the menu bar.
2. Click on Blank Document in the New Document pane.
3. If you want to close the pane, click on the X in the upper right corner of the New Document
Pane. The pane will disappear from your screen.
10.7.7 Printing
Having finished typing your document, you may want to print it. While giving the print
command, you can specify the number of copies you want and also the pages (page numbers) you
want to print.
10.7.8 Print Your Document

1. Choose File > Print from the menu bar.
2. Click on OK.
Your document will be printed.
10.7.9 Alternate Method: Printing by Using Short Key Command

1. Type Ctrl+P
2. Specify the page no. you want to print and the number of copies you want.
3. Click on OK.
Your document will be printed.
10.7.10 Alternate Method: Printing by Using the Icon

Click the print icon on the standard toolbar. Your document will be printed.
10.8 TABLES
In this section, you will learn how to create tables. You use tables to format the whole or part of
our document into columns and rows. The examples in this section are designed in such a way that in
order to complete an example you will need to complete the example preceding it. Therefore,
complete the examples in sequence. Now open MS Word on your computer and begin with the
section.
10.8.1 Creating a Table

To create a three-column, four-row table, use the following steps (see Figure 10.15):
1. Choose Table > Insert > Table from the menu bar. The Insert Table dialog box opens.
2. Type 3 in the Number of Columns field.
3. Type 4 in the Number of Rows field.
4. Select Auto in the column Width field. This will allow MS Word to determine the size of
your column widths. If you want to have a certain width of the columns, you can enter the
column width you desire.
5. Click on OK. Your table should look like the one shown here, with three columns and four
rows.
Creating a table using the insert table icon
You can also create by clicking on the insert table icon on the standard toolbar.

1. Click the Insert Table icon.
Fig 10.11 Insert table by selecting rows & columns
2. Select the number of rows and columns you need. (see Figure 10.16) The maximum
table size you can create by this method is a four-row, five-column table.
10.8.2 Moving Around a Table

Each block in the table is called a cell. In a table, use the Tab Key to move cell to cell from left to
right. Use Shift+Tab to move cell to cell from right to left. The steps listed below demonstrate how to
move within a table.
Click in the first cell in the first column.
Press the Tab Key six times. The cursor moves forward six-cells.
Press Shift+Tab Tab four times. The cursor moves backward four cells.
10.8.3 Entering Text into a Table

To enter text into a table, click on the cell you want to write into and simply type as you normally
would. Press Tab to move the cursor to the next cell. Enter the following text in your table (see Table
10.1)
1. Type Cities in the first cell in the first column. Press the Tab Key.
2. Type Restaurants in the first cell in the second column. Press the Tab Key.
3. Continue entering the text until you have entered text into all the column-heading
cells.
Cities Restauran Malls Multiplex

ts es
Delhi 2890 159 179

Bangalore 1387 70 87
Hyderaba 1270 59 69
d
Chennai 1980 80 95
Table 10.1 Entering text in a table
10.8.4 Selecting a Row and Highlighting (Marking Bold) the Text

You have already learned about highlighting (marking Bold) earlier. In the following steps, you
will select the first row of the table and make all the text5 on the row bold.
1. Click anywhere on the first row of the table.

2. Choose Table > Select > Row from the menu bar.
3. Press Ctrl+B to make the row bold.
10.8.5 Right –Aligning Text

You have learned about alignment before: In the steps listed below, you will right-align the
second (Restaurants) third (Malls), and fourth (Multiplexes) column of the table we have created.
1. You need to select ‘Restaurants’, ‘Malls’, and Multiplexes’. Place the cursor before
the ‘R’ in Restaurants’. Press the F8 Key to anchor the cursor. Then press the right
arrow key until you have highlighted ‘Restaurants’ Malls’ and ‘Multiplexes’.
2. Choose Table > Select > Column from the menu bar.
3. Press Ctrl+R to right-align the cells.
Your table (see Table 10.2) should look like the one shown below. Make any needed corrections
before you continue further.
Cities Restaur M Multipl

ants alls exes
Delhi 2890 1 179
59
Kolkata, West Bengal 879 3 48
0
Bangalore, Karnataka 1387 7 87
0
Hyderabad, Andhra 1270 5 69
Pradesh 9

Chennai, Tamil Nadu 1980 8 95
0
Table 10.2 Right Aligning Text
10.8.6 Adding a New Row at the End of the Table

You can add additional rows to a table. The simplest way to add a new row is to move to the last
column of the last row and press the Tab Key. A new row will thus be created.
1. Move to the last column of the last row of the present table.
2. Press the Tab Key.
3. Type the text in the new row.
10.8.7 Adding a Row within the Table

You can add a new row anywhere in a table. The following steps demonstrate it. To add
a row just above Bangalore, Karnataka:
1. Place the cursor anywhere in the second row (the row with Bangalore as the city.)
2. Choose Table > Insert > Rows Above from the menu bar.
3. Add the information shown below in the new row.
Mumbai, 3 2 1
Maharashtra 086 09 90
10.8.8 Resizing the Columns
You can easily change the size of columns in a table. In the steps listed below we shall
learn to adjust all the column widths.
1. Click anywhere in the table.
2. Choose Table > Select > Table from the menu bar. The table is selected .
3. Choose Table > Table Properties from the menu bar.
4. Choose the Column tab.
5. Type 13 in the Preferred Width field. This will instruct MS Word to set all the
columns to a width of 1 inch.
6. Click on OK.
Depending on the width of the text within, the first column of your table might not be wide
enough and the text might be wrapping. (see table 10.3)

Cities Restaur M Multipl
ants alls exes
Delhi 2890 1 179
59
Kolkata, West Bengal 879 3 48
0
Bangalore, Karnataka 1387 7 87
0
Hyderabad, Andhra 1270 5 69
Pradesh 9
Chennai, Tamil Nadu 1980 8 95
0
In order widen the first column:
1. Place the cursor anywhere in the first column.

2. Choose Table > Select > Column from the menu bar.
3. Choose Table > Table Properties from the menu bar.
4. Choose the Column tab.
5. Type 1.5 in the Preferred Width field.
6. Click on OK.
Resizing your column widths by using the width indicator
You can resize column widths by placing the s=cursor on the line that separates two columns.
This causes the width indicator to appear on the screen. Now left Click and drag with the mouse to
adjust the column width.
10.8.9Adding a New Column to a Table

We can add new columns to a table. To add a new column between the Cities and Restaurants
columns:
1. Place the cursor anywhere in the cities column.

2. Choose Table > Insert > Column to the Left from the menu bar.
3. Label the new column Region and add the text shown in the table below (see Table
10.4).
Cities Re Restaur M Multipl
gion ants alls exes
Delhi No 2890 1 179
rth 59

Kolkata, West Bengal Nor 879 3 48
th 0
Bangalore, Karnataka So 1387 7 87
uth 0
Hyderabad, Andhra So 1270 5 69
Pradesh uth 9
Chennai, Tamil Nadu So 1980 8 95
uth 0
10.8.10 Sorting a Table
In MS Word, it is easy to sort the data in a table. To sort table data by Region and within
Region by Cities in ascending order.
1. Click anywhere on the table.
2. Choose Table > Sort from the menu bar.
3. Select Region in the Sort By field.
4. Select Text in the Type field (because you are sorting text).
5. Select Ascending.
6. Select Cities in the Then By field.
7. Select Text in the Type field (because you are sorting text).
8. Select Ascending.
9. Select Header Row (because the table has titles across the top of the table).
10. Click on OK.
MS Word should have sorted your table like the one shown (see Table 10.5).
Cities Re Restaur M Multipl

gion ants alls exes
Delhi No 2890 1 179
rth 59
Kolkata, West Bengal Nor 879 3 48
th 0
Bangalore, Karnataka So 1387 7 87
uth 0
Hyderabad, Andhra So 1270 5 69
Pradesh uth 9
Chennai, Tamil Nadu So 1980 8 95
uth 0

10.8.11 Sum Function
You can perform on the numbers in a table. Several functions are available to us. Although a
review of all the functions is beyond the scope of this unit, but the example that follows illustrates the
Sum Function. In the example, you will add a new row to a table; place the word ‘Total at the bottom
of the Cities column, and sum the Restaurants, Malls and Multiplexes.
1. Place your cursor in the bottom cell in the last column.

2. Press the Tab Key to create a new row.
3. Type Table in the cell on the bottom row in the cities column.
4. Move to the Restaurants column.
5. Choose Table > Formula from the menu bar.
6. Type= SUM (ABOVE) in the formula field, if it does not automatically appear.
7. Select #,##0 in the Number Format field. This selection causes MS Word to separate
thousands with a comma.
8. Click on OK.
9. Move to the Malls column.
11. Type = SUM (ABOVE) in the formula field, if it does not automatically appear.
12. Select #,##0 in the Number Format field. This selection causes MS Word to separate
13. Click on OK.
14. Move to the Multiplexes column.
16. Type = SUM (ABOVE) in the formula field, if it does not automatically appear.
17. Select #,##0 in the Number Format fielt. This selection causes MS Word to separate
18. Click on OK.
10.8.12 Deleting a Row

You can delete rows from a table. To delete the Bangalore, Karnataka, row:
1. Press your cursor anywhere in the Bangalore, Karnataka row.

2. Choose Table > Delete > Rows from the menu bar.
10.8.13 Deleting a Column

You can delete columns from a table, to delete the Malls column.
1. Press your cursor anywhere in the Malls column.

2. Choose Table > Delete > Columns from the menu bar.

10.8.14 Merge Cell
In MS Word, you can merge cells, i.e. turn two or more cells into one cell. In the following
example, we are going to create a new row at the top of the table, merge the cells and add a title to the
table.
1. Move to the cell located on the first row of the first column of the table (the Cities
cell).
2. Choose Table > Insert > Rows Above from the menu bar.
3. Choose Table > Merge Cells from the menu bar.
4. Type the title Indian Metros in the new cell.
5. Press Ctrl+E to center the title.
10.8.15 Recalculate
Unlike a MS Excel spreadsheet MS Word does not automatically recalculate every time
you make a change to the table. Here, to cause a function to recalculate, you must first move
to the cell that contains the function and then press the F9 key. Or, you can move to the cell
that contains the function, right-click and select Update Field from the context menu. As you
deleted a row in the preceding example, your calculations would now be incorrect. In order
to recalculate, follow the steps given here.
1. Move to the Restaurants/Total cell.
2. Press F9.
3. Move to the Multiplexes/ Total cell and right-click.
4. Click on Update Field.
10.8.16 Table Headings

If MS Word splits your table with a page break, and the table heading display on the first page
but not on subsequent pages, you can correct this problem. Designate rows as headings. These
heading rows are repeated on the top of the table at the top of every page the table flows on. In order
to designate a row as a heading:
1. Place your cursor on that row.

2. Choose Table > Heading Rows Repeat from the menu bar
10.8.17 Converting Text to Table

In MS Word, you can convert text to a table. For this, a delimiter such as a comma, paragraph
marker or tab should be used to separate columns of text. In the following example, you will convert
tab-delimited text into a table.
1. Type the following items as shown.
Student Colour Height

James Fair 150 cm
Rudolf Whitish 160 cm
JannetBlack 170 cm
Fruit Colour Taste
Apple Red Sweet
Orange Yellow Sweet
Lemon Yellow Sour
2. Select the text.

3. Choose Table > Convert > Text to Table from the menu bar.
4. Type 3 in the Number of Columns field.
5. Select Auto in the Column Width field.
6. Select the Tabs radio button in the Separate Text At frame.
7. Click on OK.
MS Word should have converted your text to a table, and your table should look like the one
shown below (see Table 10.6)
Student Color Height

James Fair 150 cm
Jannet Black 170 cm
Fruit Color Taste
Apple Red Sweet
Orange Yellow Sweet
Lemon Yellow Sour
10.8.18. Splitting a Table

Splitting a single table into two tables is easy in MS Word. Follow the steps listed below to
separate the table you just created into two tables:
1. Place your cursor anywhere on the row that reads ‘Fruit, Colour, Taste’.
2. Choose Table > Split Table from the menu bar.
You should now have two tables, as shown (see Tables 10.7 and 10.8).

Student Color Height
James Fair 150 cm
Jannet Black 170 cm
Tables 10.7
Fruit Color Taste

Apple Red Sweet
Orange Yellow Sweet
Lemon Yellow Sour
Tables 10.8
10.8.19. Table Auto Format

You can use Auto Formats to apply borders, shading, special fonts and colour to a table. MS
Word lists all formats in the Table Auto Format dialog box. In the Auto Table Format dialog box,
Click on a format to see that format displayed in the Preview box. You can even customize the way
the format is applied. Click the features you want in the Formats to Apply and the Apply Special
Formats To frames. MS Word provides us with a long list of Auto Formats.
To apply an Auto Format to your fruits, Colour, Taste table.
1. Click anywhere in the table.

2. Choose Table > Table Auto Format from the menu bar.
3. Click on Table Colourful 2 in the Table Styles box.
4. Select Heading Rows and First Column in the Apply Special Formats. To frame. Do
not select Last Row and Last Column.
5. Click on Apply.
Your table should look like the one shown in Table 10.9.
Fruit Color Taste

Apple Red Sweet
Orange Yellow Sweet
Lemon Yellow Sour
10.8.20. Save File

You can save our file by following the instructions listed here:

• Choose file > Save As from the menu bar.
• Identify the exact folder in the Look In field.
• Using ‘File Name field’ name your file by typing Word 7.doc.
• Click on Save.
• To close MS word Choose File > Exit from the menu bar.
CHECK YOUR PROGRESS

What is the use of horizontal and vertical scroll bar?
What are nonprinting characters?
How can you easily find the recently used file in the system?
What is line spacing?
What is the use of indention?
10.9 SUMMARY
• The title bar is located at the very top of the screen in a MS word document. On this
bar, the name of the document which is currently worked upon is displayed.
• The menu bar is the bar which is usually found directly below the Title bar. Menus
are displayed in the menu bar.
• Shortcut to menu commands is provided by the Toolbars.
• The ruler is used for changing the format of the document quickly and is generally
found below the main toolbars.
• There are five views which are displayed in the MS Word document. These are
Normal, Web Layout, Print Layout, Reading Layout or online Layout.
• Text area is the large area just below the ruler. Document or data can be typed in this
area.
• A document can be saved in any name or the type of subject before exiting.
• The Status bar is the bar that appears at the very bottom of the screen and provides
information in sequential order as the current page, current section, and the page you
are working and the total number of pages, inches from the top of the page, current
line number and current column number.
• The Horizontal scroll bar is located above the Status bar and the Vertical scroll bar is
located along the right side of the screen.
• There are certain types of characters which do not print but do affect the document
layout. Clicking on any option on the Menu bar, a drop-down menu appears.
• The shortcut notations can be made out from the document by a key name followed
by a dash and a letter means to press the key while pressing the latter.
• MS Word can automatically wrap text at the end of the line, Press Enter to start with a
new paragraph. The text bold, underlined or italicized using Word. Files saved can be
recalled later.
• Text can be copied from one area of the document in the document as the cut data and
copied data is stored on the Clipboard. Clipboard can store both the information like
cut and copy. When some new information is stored on the Clipboard, the old
information is lost.
• Auto Text option is used to store text permanently so you can use the same text
repeatedly.
• MS Word automatically checks your spelling and grammar as you type in.
• The Find command is used to find a particular word or piece of text.
• The Line Spacing commands set the amount of space between lines within a
paragraph.
• Indentation allows us to indent a paragraph from any of the two (left or right) or from
both margins.
• MS Word gives us a choice of several types of alignment. Left-justified text is
aligned on the left margin. It is the default setting in MS Word.
• When you press the Tab key, the cursor moves ½ inch across the page and an arrow
appears your screen. This arrow is a nonprinting character, when you print your
document, this arrow will not be visible on it.
• Several bulleting and numbering styles are available in this software.
• Using the Undo command, we can quickly reverse most commands we have just
executed.
• However, if you then change your mind and decide that the undoing the command
was wrong, you can use Redo.
• Having finished typing your document, you may want to print it.
• You can use tables to format the whole or part of our document into columns and
rows.
• You can perform calculations on the numbers in a table. Several functions are
available to us.
10.10 KEY TERMS

• Menu bar: The bar that is usually found directly below the Title bar. Menus are
displayed in the menu bar.
• Ruler: Used for changing the format of the document quickly is generally found
below the main toolbars.
• Status bar: The bar that appears at the very bottom of the screen and provides
information in sequential order as the current page.

• Hanging indent: Indents the first line of the paragraph from the margin by the amount
specified in the Left field. The amount specified in the Left field and the amount
specified in the By field together indent all subsequent lines of the paragraph.
• Indentation: Allows us to indent a paragraph from any of the two (left or right) or
from both margins. The following example illustrates different types of indentation.
• Line spacing: Sets the amount of space between lines within a paragraph. Single
spacing is the default setting for a paragraph in MS Word.
• Spell cheek: MS Word automatically checks your spelling and grammar as you type
in. Spelling errors are shown by a red wavy line under the word and the grammar
errors are shown by a green wavy line under the error.
10.11 END QUESTIONS

1. What are toolbars? How can these be displayed?
2. What are the various types of view in MS Word?
3. Give the steps to exit from MS Word?
4. What is highlighting of text? What are the methods in which a text can be
highlighted?
5. What is shortcut notation on Word? Write the shortcut notations and its uses in the
MS Word?
6. What are cut and paste functions? Differentiate between cut and past and copy and
paste.
7. What is spell check feature in MS Word? How is it used?
8. Write the steps to give line spacing in text.
9. What are bullets and numbering? How are they inserted in a document?
10. How is a row and column deleted?
11. What is a menu bar option? What are its functions?
12. What is the status bar? Explain its functions.
13. Discuss the use of toolbars in MS Word.
14. Discuss working with paragraphs. How can a paragraph be indented?
15. Explain the bold, italic and underline functions of MS Word.
16. Explain the printing option in MS Word.
17. Explain how tables can be created and used in MS Word.
10.12 REFERENCES
Roy, A. Allen. (2001). A History of the Personal Computer: The People and the technology, 1st
edition. London: Allan Publishing.
Tsang, Cheryl. (1999). Microsoft: First Generation. New Jersey: Jonh Wiley & Sons.

Camarda, Bill. (2003). Special Edition Using Microsoft Office World 2003. London: Que
Publishing.
Roy, A. Allen. (2001). A History of the Personal Computer: The People and the Technology, 1st
edition. London: Allan Publishing.
Tsang, Cheryl. (1999). Microsoft: First Generation. New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons.
Camarda, Bill. (2003) . Special Edition Using Microsoft Office Word 2003.
London: Que Publishing.

Yashwantrao Chavan
Maharashtra Open University
Cover by Rajasekharan Parameswaran, (Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under
the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2 or any later version published by the Free Software
Foundation; with no Invariant Sections, no Front-Cover Texts, and no Back-Cover Texts. A copy of the license is
included in the section entitled GNU Free Documentation License.)(CC_BY_SA)
File URL:https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Artist_Rajasekharan_-_Digital_sketch_by_Bayani_artist.jpg
Cover Design: Dr Rajendra Vadnere, Director, School of Continuing Education
B. Sc. in Media Graphics and Animation

BMG 101: Introduction to Computers
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BMG101 Intro Comp Internet 311017

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Yashwantrao Chavan

Maharashtra Open University

B. Sc. in Media Graphics and Animation

T97:B.Sc. in Media Graphics and Animation [B.Sc. (MGA)]

YASHWANTRAO CHAVAN MAHARASHTRA OPEN UNIVERSITY

Dr Rajendra Vadnere, Dr Surya Gunjal Smt Jyoti Shetty.

Author Content Editor Instruct. Tech. Editor

© 2017, Yashwantrao Chavan Maharashtra Open Univesity, Nashik

1.0 BEFORE WE BEGIN ........................................................................................................................... 17

1.1 UNIT OBJECTIVES ............................................................................................................................. 17

1.2 What is a computer? ........................................................................................................................ 17

1.3 What makes a computer powerful? ................................................................................................. 18

1.3.1 Speed: ............................................................................................................................................. 18

1.3.2 Reliability: ....................................................................................................................................... 19

1.3.3 Accuracy .......................................................................................................................................... 19

1.3.4 Storage ............................................................................................................................................ 19

1.3.6 Versatility ........................................................................................................................................ 19

1.3.7 Power of Remembering .................................................................................................................. 19

1.3.8 No “intelligence” ............................................................................................................................. 19

1.3.9 No Feelings ...................................................................................................................................... 20

1.4 THE HISTORY OF COMPUTERS .......................................................................................................... 20

1.4.1 Types of calculating Machines ........................................................................................................ 20

1.4.2 Napier’s Bones ................................................................................................................................ 20

1.4.3 Slide Rule......................................................................................................................................... 22

1.4.4 Pascal’s adding & subtracting machines ......................................................................................... 23

1.4.5 Leibniz’s multiplication and division machines ............................................................................... 24

1.4.6 Babbage’s analytical engine ............................................................................................................ 26

1.4.7 Mechanical calculator ..................................................................................................................... 27

1.5 Electrical Calculator ......................................................................................................................... 28

BMG101: Introduction to Computers Page 1

1.6 Computer Generations..................................................................................................................... 32

1.6.1 First generation computers (1939-1954): Vacuum Tube ................................................................ 32

1.6.2 Second generation computers (1954-1959): Transistors: .............................................................. 33

1.6.3 Third generation computers (1959-1971): IC ................................................................................. 34

1.6.4 Fourth generation (1939-1954): Microprocessors.......................................................................... 36

1.6.5 Fifth generation computers (1991 & beyond) ................................................................................ 36

1.7 Types of Computers ......................................................................................................................... 38

1.9 Mainframe .................................................................................................................................. 40

1.9.1 Differences between Mainframe and supercomputers .................................................................. 42

1.9.2 Characteristics of Mainframe.......................................................................................................... 42

1.10 Supercomputer .............................................................................................................................. 43

1.11 Servers ........................................................................................................................................... 45

Hardware requirement ............................................................................................................................ 46

1.13 KEY TERMS ..................................................................................................................................... 47

1.14 END QUESTIONS............................................................................................................................. 48

1.15 REFERENCES ................................................................................................................................... 48

UNIT 2: COMPUTER ORGANIZATION .............................................................................. 50

2.0 BEFORE WE BEGIN ........................................................................................................................... 50

2.1 Unit Objectives ................................................................................................................................ 50

2.2 Basic Computer Operations ............................................................................................................. 50

2.2.1. INPUT ............................................................................................................................................. 53

2.2.2 PROCESSING .................................................................................................................................... 54

BMG101: Introduction to Computers Page 2

2.2.4 OUTPUT .......................................................................................................................................... 55

2.2.5 STORAGE ........................................................................................................................................ 56

2.3 Functional Unit ................................................................................................................................ 56

2.3.1 Arithmetic and Logic Unit (ALU)...................................................................................................... 56

2.3.2 Control Unit .................................................................................................................................... 57

2.3.3 Central Processing Unit (CPU) ......................................................................................................... 57

2.4 MEMORY SYSTEM IN A COMPUTER ................................................................................................. 58

2.5 CAPACITY OF PRIMARY MEMORY .................................................................................................... 59

2.5.1. Primary Memory / Volatile Memory:............................................................................................. 59

2.5.2 Secondary Memory / Non Volatile Memory: .................................................................................. 59