contact

n 1: close interaction: "they kept in daily contact"; "they

claimed that they had been in contact with

extraterrestrial beings"

2: the act of touching physically; "her fingers came in contact

with the light switch" [syn: {contacting}]

3: the state or condition of touching or of being in immediate

proximity: "litmus paper turns red on contact with an

acid"

4: the physical coming together of two or more things; "contact

with the pier scraped paint from the hull" [syn: {impinging},

{striking}]

5: a person who is in a position to give you special

assistance; "he used his business contacts to get an

introduction to the governor" [syn: {middleman}]

6: a channel for communication between groups; "he provided a

liaison with the geurillas" [syn: {liaison}, {link}, {inter-group

communication}]

7: a junction where things (as two electrical conductors) touch

or are in physical contact; "they forget to solder the

contacts" [syn: {tangency}]

8: a communicative interaction; "the pilot made contact with

the base"; "he got in touch with his colleagues" [syn: {touch}]

v : be in communication with, establish communication with; "Our

advertisements reach millions" [syn: {reach}, {get

through}, {get hold of}]

compact

1. (Or "finite", "isolated") In {domain theory}, an element d

of a {cpo} D is compact if and only if, for any {chain} S, a

subset of D,

d <◦ lub S ◦> there exists s in S such that d <◦ s.

I.e. you always reach d (or better) after a finite number of

steps up the chain.

("<◦" is written in {LaTeX} as {\sqsubseteq}).

[{Jargon File}]

(1995-01-13)

2. Of a design, describes the valuable property that it can

all be apprehended at once in one's head. This generally

means the thing created from the design can be used with

greater facility and fewer errors than an equivalent tool that

is not compact. Compactness does not imply triviality or lack

of power; for example, {C} is compact and {Fortran} is not,

but C is more powerful than Fortran. Designs become

non-compact through accreting {feature}s and {cruft} that

don't merge cleanly into the overall design scheme (thus, some

fans of {Classic C} maintain that {ANSI C} is no longer

compact).

(1995-01-13)