View source for VTK/Tutorials/VTK Terminology

<small>Please see [http://www.cs.uic.edu/~jbell/CS526/Tutorial/Tutorial.html this] for a very nice introduction to VTK, and especially the terminology</small>

VTK conceptually divides the "pipeline" into two segments: A data processing segment and a rendering segment.

==Data Processing Segment==
The data processing segment consists of data sources and data filters. These objects give the user direct access to the data.

===Filter===
A filter is an object that takes one or many inputs, operates on the inputs, and produces one or many outputs.

===Source===
A source is a special case of a filter where there are 0 inputs.

==Rendering Segment==
The rendering segment is essentially an OpenGL wrapper. In this segment of the pipeline, the user does not have direct access to the data - it is in a form that is most efficient for the graphics hardware. The rendering segment consists of mappers, actors, renderers, and render windows. 

===Mappers===
Mappers serve as the transition between the two segments of the pipeline. It can be thought of as a filter that converts data in a manipulatable form (e.g. something from the data processing segment) to a form that can be rendered.

===Actor===
An actor is an "OpenGL object". That is, if you have a geometric object or a model of some sort, you will have to create an actor for it to give to the renderer.

===Render Window===
This is the actual window that the operating system opens.

===Renderer===
A render window can contain one or many renderers. The renderer is where the data is actually drawn to the screen.