Shadow (OS/2)
In the graphical Workplace Shell of the OS/2 operating system, a shadow is an object that represents another object.
A shadow is a stand-in for any other object on the desktop, such as a document, an application, a folder, a hard disk, a network share or removable medium, or a printer. A target object can have an arbitrary number of shadows. When double-clicked, the desktop acts the same way as if the original object had been double-clicked. The shadow's context menu is the same as the target object's context menu, with the addition of an "Original" sub-menu, that allows the location of, and explicit operation upon, the original object.
A shadow is a dynamic reference to an object. The original may be moved to another place in the file system, without breaking the link. The WPS updates shadows of objects whenever the original target objects are renamed or moved. To do this, it requests notification from the operating system of all file rename operations. (Thus if a target filesystem object is renamed when the WPS is not running, the link between the shadow and the target object is broken.)
Read more about Shadow (OS/2): Similarities To and Differences From Other Mechanisms, Distinguishing Marks, Managing Shadows
Famous quotes containing the word shadow:
“Character is like a tree and reputation like its shadow. The shadow is what we think of it; the tree is the real thing.”
—Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865)