[Techtalk] dah, what's transparent?

[Travis Casey]

Tuesday, January 27, 2004, 4:42:16 PM, ed orphan wrote:

> When reading technical manuals and computer
> magazines, once in a while something is
> referred to as "transparent". 
> "This process is transparent to the user."
> "It is essential that this code be transparent."
>    What are they talking about?
> Can you wrap sandwiches in it?

They mean that, ideally, the user shouldn't even realize that it's
there, except when he/she needs the functionality.

For example, a "transparent" proxy is one where the end users don't
have to know that there's a proxy -- they're automatically routed to
the proxy without having to enter any new settings.

When you visit a website, any time you click on a link, even to the
same site, you may be opening a new connection -- but this is
transparent, so you normally don't even know it's happening.  The same
with website authorization -- the web browser often has to send some
sort of authorization info for each page visited, but it asks you for
it once, then sends it again each time it needs it, so that the
repeated requests for authorization are transparent to you as the
user.

Sometimes "transparent" isn't really transparent, but just means
easy-to-use.  For example, someone might say that background
spell-checking with misspelled words being highlighted in some way is
"more transparent" than the old style of having to manually run a
spellchecker.

Hopefully that's enough examples.  :-)

-- 
Travis Casey
efindel at earthlink.net