Q&A is an easy to-use straight-forward file manager. It includes a good word processor rivalling stand-alone packages and is more powerful than the pfs products, it is especially appropriate for the user who is familiar with that series but wants a more sophisticated product. Research Q&A
The quadrant was probably the earliest astronomical instrument to be used at sea. It consists of a flat plate in the shape of a quarter-circle, with a plumb-line suspended from the apex. The hand- held quadrant is held in a vertical plane with the right angle away from the eye and the curved edge downwards. One of the straight edges is equipped with a pair of metal pinhole sights which are aligned with an astronomical object and the hanging cord reads off the altitude of this object above the horizon on the circular scale. It was used in the 15th century to measure the altitude of a celestial body, usually the pole star. The English quadrant or back-staff, first described in 1595, was a more complex instrument that measured the altitude of the Sun by the shadow the
quadrant cast. The back-staff was more accurate than previous instruments, and had the advantage that the observer had his back to the Sun. It generally superseded the old
quadrant, the astrolabe, and the cross-staff in the 17th century. A larger form of quadrant, known as a mural quadrant, is mounted on a north-south wall and has a solid arm instead of a hanging cord. This obsolete instrument was superseded by the meridian, or transit, circle, a telescope free to move only in the meridian or north-south plane. Research Quadrant
In audio engineering, quantization is the encoding process when the analog input is approximated (quantized) to the nearest binary value available. Research Quantization
Quark XPress is a sophisticated, high-end desktop publishing program for the Mac for users who need to produce professional-quaity typeset work (it is extensively used by professional printers). The product offers many of the features found in most popular desktop publishing programs such as user- defined style sheets, master page support, and text wrap-around graphics. Leading and kerning are precise enough to meet the needs of typesetters and publishers. Quark XPress includes integrated word processing capabilities and features such as an 80,000-word dictionary, spell checker, and search-and-replace. Hyphenation can be automatic or manual and you can define exceptions.
Quark XPress is able to handle long, text-intensive documents because of its ability to automatically insert pages, number individual sections, automatically insert pages, and globally format text. The product can print back to front, negative or mirror images, thumbnails, or collate output. Research Quark XPress
A quern is a hand-mill for grinding corn. The simplest kind consists of a large stone with a cavity in the upper surface to contain the corn which is then pounded, rather than ground, by a smaller stone. The more usual form consists of two circular flat stones, the upper one pierced in the centre, and revolving on a wooden pin inserted in the lower. A handle is attached to the outer edge and used to turn the stone while corn is dropped into the central opening. Research Quern
Quetzal is a call logging system that has been specifically designed to meet the needs of busy British Information Centres. A unique work-group package, in that it combines call and inventory management in a simple, closely integrated way. As a work group product, Quetzal helps each member of the Information Centre by providing Instant access to all the information required to trace support calls, inventory details, and financial information. By supporting the information centre as a complete work group, Quetzal offers significant gains in the areas of co-ordinating group activity improving group communications and strengthening group identity. The heart of
Quetzal is the hot-line support system, which is integrated closely with the inventory management features. This integration means that support staff have immediate access to the hardware and software installed at the user's PC. Research Quetzal
Quiana is a type of nylon, introduced by Du Pont in the late 1960s. It is light and wrinkle- resistant, and has been knitted and woven into fabrics that have subsequently been promoted as high- fashion materials. Research Quiana
QWERTY refers to a standard English-language typewriter keyboard layout (sometimes called the Sholes keyboard after its inventor), as opposed to Dvorak or foreign-language layouts or APL keyboard. It is sometimes said that it was designed to slow down the typist, but this is wrong; it was designed to allow faster typing - under a constraint now long obsolete. In early typewriters, fast typing using nearby type-bars jammed the mechanism. So Sholes fiddled the layout to separate the letters of many common digraphs (he did a far from perfect job, though; `th', `tr', `ed', and `er', for example, each use two nearby keys). Also, putting the letters of ` typewriter' on one line allowed it to be typed with particular speed and accuracy for demonstrations. The jamming problem was essentially solved soon afterward by a suitable use of springs, but the keyboard layout lives on. Research QWERTY
Abbreviations
SciTech
Research Q&A
