Glossary Terms - G

gateway

A machine that exists on two networks, such as the Internet and BITNET, and that can transfer mail between them.

 

GIF

Graphics Interchange Format. A platform-independent file format developed by CompuServe, the GIF format is commonly used to distribute graphics on the Internet. Mighty battles have been waged over the pronunciation of this term, and although Robin Williams notes that it's pronounced "jiff" in her book Jargon, both of my glossary proofreaders flagged it as being pronounced with a hard g, as in "graphics." I surrender; pronounce it as you like.

 

.gif

The filename extension generally given to GIF files.

 

GNU

With apologies for the circular reference, GNU stands for GNU's Not Unix. Developed by Richard Stallman and the Free Software Foundation, GNU is (or will be, when finished) a high-quality version of the Unix operating system that is free of charge and freely modifiable by its users. GNU software is distributed at no cost with source code. Many GNU applications and utilities are mainstays of the Unix community.

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Gopher

An information retrieval system created by the University of Minnesota. In wide acceptance on the Internet, Gopher is one of the most useful resources available.

 

Gopherspace

The collection of all available Gopher servers.

 

.gz

An extension used by GNU's version of ZIP, called gzip.

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