shim
:shim: n. 1. A small piece of data inserted in order to achieve a desired
memory alignment or other addressing property. For example, the PDP-11
Unix linker, in split I&D (instructions and data) mode, inserts a
two-byte shim at location 0 in data space so that no data object will
have an address of 0 (and be confused with the C null pointer). See also
loose bytes
2. A type of small transparent image inserted into HTML
documents by certain WYSIWYG HTML editors, used to set the spacing of
elements meant to have a fixed positioning within a TABLE or DIVision.
Hackers who work on the HTML code of such pages afterwards invariably
curse these for their crocky dependence on the particular spacing of
original image file, the editor that generated them, and the version of
the browser used to view them. Worse, they are a poorly designed
kludge
which the advent of Cascading Style Sheets makes wholly
unnecessary; Any fool can plainly see that use of borders, layers and
positioned elements is the Right Thing (or would be if adequate support
for CSS were more common).
Jargon File Version 4.3.1, 29 JUN 2001 =
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