footprint
    n 1: a mark of a foot or shoe on a surface; "the police made
         casts of the footprints in the soft earth outside the
         window" [syn: footprint, footmark, step]
    2: a trace suggesting that something was once present or felt or
       otherwise important; "the footprints of an earlier
       civilization"
    3: the area taken up by some object; "the computer had a desktop
       footprint of 10 by 16 inches"

Footprint \Foot"print`\, n.
   The impression of the foot; a trace or footmark; as,
   "Footprints of the Creator."
   [1913 Webster]

footprint
 n.

    1. The floor or desk area taken up by a piece of hardware.

    2. [IBM] The audit trail (if any) left by a crashed program (often in
    plural, footprints). See also toeprint.

    3. RAM footprint: The minimum amount of RAM which an OS or other program
    takes; this figure gives one an idea of how much will be left for other
    applications. How actively this RAM is used is another matter entirely.
    Recent tendencies to featuritis and software bloat can expand the RAM
    footprint of an OS to the point of making it nearly unusable in practice.
    [This problem is, thankfully, limited to operating systems so stupid that
    they don't do virtual memory -- ESR]

footprint

   1.  The floor or desk area taken up by a
   piece of hardware.

   2.  The amount of disk or RAM taken up by
   a program or file.

   3. (IBM) The audit trail left by a crashed program (often
   "footprints").

   See also toeprint.

   [Jargon File]

   (1995-04-25)