Nib (pen)

A nib is the part of a quill, dip pen or fountain pen which comes into contact with the writing surface in order to deposit ink. Different types of nibs vary in their purpose, shape and size, as well as the material from which they are made.

History

Quill

The quill replaced the reed pen across Europe by the Early Middle Ages and remained the main writing tool of the West for nearly a thousand years until the 17th century. Quills are fashioned by cutting a nib into the end of a feather obtained from a fairly large bird, such as a goose, traditionally from its left wing. A quill has the advantage of being more durable and more flexible than a reed pen, and it can also retain ink in the hollow shaft of the feather, known as the calamus, allowing more writing time between ink dippings. The quill was in common use until the early 19th century and the advent of the metal nib. For business purposes, the quill was fairly quickly overtaken; however, it remains popular for personal use and for artistic work.

Dip pen

A dip pen or nib pen usually consists of a metal nib with capillary channels like those of fountain pen nibs, mounted on a handle or holder, often made of wood. Other materials can be used for the holder, including bone, metal and plastic, while some pens are made entirely of glass. Generally speaking, dip pens have no ink reservoir; therefore the user has to recharge the ink from an ink bowl or bottle in order to continue drawing or writing. However, there are simple, tiny tubular reservoirs that illustrators sometimes clip onto dip pens; these allow drawing for several minutes without recharging the nib. Recharging can be done by dipping into an inkwell; however, some illustrators and cartoonists, who are the main current users of such pens, are more likely to charge the pen with an eyedropper, a syringe, or a brush, which gives them more control over the amount of ink applied. Thus, "dip pens" are not necessarily dipped. Many illustrators call them "nib pens."

Dip pens emerged in the early 19th century, when they replaced quill pens, or in some parts of the world reed pens. They were generally used prior to the development of fountain pens in the later 19th century, and are now mainly used in illustration, calligraphy, and comics.

Interface Builder

Interface Builder is a software development application for Apple's Mac OS X operating system. It is part of Xcode (formerly Project Builder), the Apple Developer Connection developer's toolset. Interface Builder allows Cocoa and Carbon developers to create interfaces for applications using a graphical user interface. The resulting interface is stored as a .nib file, short for NeXT Interface Builder, or more recently, as a .xib file.

Interface Builder is descended from the NeXTSTEP development software of the same name. A version of Interface Builder is also used in the development of OpenStep software, and a very similar tool called Gorm exists for GNUstep. On March 27, 2008, a specialized iPhone version of Interface Builder allowing interface construction for iPhone applications was released with the iPhone SDK Beta 2.

Interface Builder was intentionally developed as a separate application, to allow interaction designers to design interfaces without having to use a code-oriented IDE, but as of Xcode 4, Apple has integrated its functionality directly into Xcode.

NIB

NIB, nib or NiB may refer to:

In companies and organizations:

Northern Illinois Big 12 Conference

The Northern Illinois Big 12 Conference is a high-school athletic conference with ten high schools in northern Illinois. The conference began competing during the 2010-2011 academic year. In many respects, including membership and organization, the NI-Big 12 is much like a reboot of the old North Central Illinois Conference (NCIC).Six of the schools are former members of the North Central Illinois Conference (1929-2011), and the conference is divided into two divisions, much as the NCIC was for decades. The former NCIC schools are Geneseo, LaSalle-Peru, Sterling, Ottawa, and Rochelle. Also, there are five schools that were members of the Western Sun Conference (2007-2010). The former Western Sun Schools are DeKalb, Kaneland, Sycamore, Yorkville, and Rochelle, which left the NCIC in 2007 to join the WSC, and was thus a member of both extinct conferences.

The creation of the new conference appeared to have settled an unstable situation that existed in the NCIC since the departure of the Rochelle Hubs after winning nine consecutive NCIC (Southwest Div.) football championships. When Rochelle became a founding member of the Western Sun, the NCIC began shifting members trying to keep together a conference that was built of schools with inordinately large population variances. Whereas the NCIC schools had not all played in the same division in football for several decades, all the schools of the NIB-12 do play in the same division in all sports, regardless of the number of classes.

Pen

A pen (Latin: penna, feather) is a writing implement used to apply ink to a surface, such as paper, for writing or drawing. Historically, reed pens, quill pens, and dip pens were used, with a nib dipped in ink. Ruling pens allow precise adjustment of line width, and still find a few specialized uses, but technical pens such as the Rapidograph are more commonly used. Modern types also include ballpoint, rollerball, fountain, and felt or ceramic tip pens.

Types of pens

Modern

The main modern types of pens can be categorized by the kind of writing tip or point:

Pen (Vidhan Sabha constituency)

Pen Vidhan Sabha constituency (Marathi: पेण विधानसभा मतदारसंघ) is one of the 288 Vidhan Sabha (legislative assembly) constituencies of Maharashtra state in Western India. This constituency is located in the Raigad district

Members of Legislative Assembly

Election results

General elections 2009

See also