Path: utzoo!utgpu!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!ames!ai.etl.army.mil!mike
From: mike@ai.etl.army.mil (Mike McDonnell)
Newsgroups: comp.graphics
Subject: Re: the word "bitmap"
Message-ID: <235@ai.etl.army.mil>
Date: 6 Jan 89 21:21:06 GMT
References: <8568@pasteur.Berkeley.EDU> <7549@watcgl.waterloo.edu> <8901050417.AA16210@explorer.dgp.toronto.edu>
Reply-To: mike@ai.etl.army.mil (Mike McDonnell)
Organization: USAETL, Fort Belvoir, Virginia
Lines: 17

In article <8901050417.AA16210@explorer.dgp.toronto.edu> alain@dgp.toronto.edu (Alain Fournier) writes:
>I agree with Paul Heckbert that "bit-map" should be kept for 1 bit deep arrays
>(by the way Rob Pike, ToG 2,2, (April 1983), and Eugene Fiume, Computers and
>Graphics, 11, 2, April 1987, have interesting distinctions between the bit-map
>as an array in memory vs what is on the screen).
>That leaves us without a good word for multi-bit-maps. My modest proposal
>is "swatch".  
[some stuff deleted]

I like "pixmap".  This is used to mean a multilevel image in the X
Window System and is therefore probably on its way to becoming a
standard term already since X is becoming big.  X also uses "bitmap" for
a 1-bit displayable array.  Pixmap must, of course, be qualified when it
is used, as in "8-bit pixmap".
-- 
Mike McDonnell at the U.S. Army Engineer Topographic Laboratories, Bldg. 2592
Fort Belvoir, VA 22060-5546   TEL:(202)355-2716   NET: mike@ai.etl.army.mil