1. for acronyms like FTP, HTTPD, MODEM, ...
2. for terms in acronym expansions like system, protocol, ...

For the acronym search you have the options to search exact or fuzzy.

Exact search

Exact search will find acronyms all of which match exactly the characters you type in.

Typing e.g. DD will find:

DD	Data Dictionary
DD	Double Density

but not

DDC	Digital Data Channel (VESA)
DDE	Dynamic Data Exchange

Fuzzy search

Fuzzy search will find any occurence of the characters you type in, should it be in the acronym itself, in the expansion or even in the reference link.

Typing e.g.OSI will find:

GMI	Generic Management Information (OSI)
GOSIP	Government Open Systems Interconnections Profile (USA, UK)
MHS	Message Handling System (GOSIP, X.400, Novell)
MTA	Message Transfer Agent (OSI, X.400)
OSI	Open Systems Interconnection (ISO)

General notes

The database of V.E.R.A. is being built from the system-independent ASCII-version and contains no diacritics, i.e. ä, é etc. For that reason you cannot use diacritics in the term you search for. Just leave them away, e.g. type an e for é. If you are looking for a german term, please you the following superscriptions: Ä, ä = ae; Ö, ö = oe; Ü, ü = ue; ß = ss.
Because some acronyms are not unique in style, the acronyms in V.E.R.A. do not contain any speacial characters, only characters and numbers are used. Please remember this, when you are searching for acronyms.

Examples:

DFÜ	=	DFUE
ASN.1	=	ASN1
OS/2	=	OS2

What is thought to be the common style can be found at the end of the line in quotation marks.

Example:

ASN1	Abstract Syntax Notation One (OSI), "ASN.1"
ATT	American Telephone and Telegraph, "AT&T"

Hints for searching acronyms

To see what V.E.R.A. can do for you what most common acronym expanders cannot, use the options 'acronym search' and 'fuzzy' and then enter a general topic acronym, e.g. ATM, or if you are looking for a general topic which has not its own acronym use the option 'other term search' and enter e.g. 'netware'.

• Concatenated acronyms

  Often used multiple acronyms can be found leaving away the space or any speacial character between them.

  Example:

  AMTPE	Apple Media Tool Programming Environment (Apple), "AMT PE"
  RISCOS	RISC Operating System (Acorn), "RISC OS"

• Acronyms pointing to versions

  Acronyms which make use of numbers may have those left out in V.E.R.A., because it would not make much sense to have the same acronym several times in the database. For example there are different versions of MNP (Microcom Networking Protocol), all of which have different meanings. MNP4 means something else than MNP5 or MNP10. Anyway everytime MNP means Microcom Networking Protocol.
  That's similar with e.g. POP2 and POP3.

  If you are looking for such an acronym and you don't find it, try leaving the number(s) away.

Notes about search results

• Style of the acronym expansions

  The acronym expansions basically follow their acronyms in style. Exceptions are made if expansions are containing acronyms theirselves. This often leads to an kind of odd or even wrong orthogaphical style.

  Examples:

  AUX	Apple UniX, "A/UX"
  XT	eXtended Technology
  ACL	Advanced CMOS Logic

• Reference links

  The terms in parenthesis which often can be found behind the expansions are reference links to certain topics or firms and should help you to get an idea of in which context an acronym is being used.

  Examples:

  WB	WorkBench (Amiga)
  WYSIWYG	What You See Is What You Get (DTP)

  The reference links in V.E.R.A. are formatted as WWW-Hyperlink. Those links point back to V.E.R.A. The formatting is done on-the-fly. Thus it may be that some links will lead you nowhere.

• Additional explanations

  Terms in square brackets are showing additional explanations, all of which do not directly belong to the acronym's expansion, but to the acronyms meaning somehow.

  Examples:

  ARM	Annotated [c++] Reference Manual
  RLL	Run Length Limited [encoding]

• Alternative expansions

  If there are alternative expansions for the same acronym these are separated by a slash. Anyway that is not true for acronyms of basically different meanings.

  Examples:

  AE	Apple Events
  AE	Application Entity / Environment / Engineering (APE)

• File extensions

  With some exceptions you will not find any file extensions in V.E.R.A., e.g. a search for EPS (Encapsulated PostScript) will lead you nowhere. There are far too many file extensions around and there are special lists on the net dealing with this.

• Gaps

  I am still looking for expansions in lines with '???' on them.

  Anyway please feel free to submit any acronyms you find to be missing in V.E.R.A by mail. I am very interested in computing acronyms in any special fields, e.g. architecture or medicine. Please try to give a reference to the field of use or category when you submit very special acronyms.

[Thu Nov 1 06:43:58 2001]