foreground
[UNIX] vt. To foreground a task is to bring it to
the top of one's
stack for immediate processing, and hackers
often use it in this sense for non-computer tasks. "If your
presentation is due next week, I guess I'd better foreground
writing up the design document."
Technically, on a time-sharing system, a task executing in
foreground is one able to accept input from and return output to
the user; oppose
background. Nowadays this term is primarily
associated with
{UNIX}, but it appears first to have been used
in this sense on OS/360. Normally, there is only one foreground
task per terminal (or terminal window); having multiple processes
simultaneously reading the keyboard is a good way to
lose.
