packaging

packaging containment and packing prior to sale with the primary purpose of facilitating the purchase and use of a product. Before 1800 packaging was restricted almost entirely to containment for shipping, with minimum levels of protection and preservation. Grocery bags, for example, were known in the 17th cent.; however, it was not until the 19th cent. that practical bag-making machinery was developed. That century saw the emergence of metal cans (1810), setup boxes (1844), folding cartons (1879), and the Owens bottle machine (1899). Early in the 20th cent., marketing-oriented packaging began to evolve and branding, quality, storage and handling, and point-of-sale display became important attributes. By the end of World War II, packaging had become a major medium of advertising and marketing. In recent years, consumer advocates have argued that packages should contain more information on nutrition, unit costs, and contents. The Fair Packaging and Labeling Act of 1966 gave the Food and Drug Administration authority to determine that packages are labeled accurately; the 1990 Nutrition Labeling Act required packages to contain more nutritional information, forcing companies to relabel about 75% of all goods carried by supermarkets. Environmental concerns have led to the passage of state and local laws requiring that some types of packages (notably bottles and cans) be recycled. Manufacturers are attempting to allay further regulation by developing and using packages that cause less damage to the environment.

pack·age / ˈpakij/ • n. an object or group of objects wrapped in paper or plastic, or packed in a box. ∎  the box or bag in which things are packed. ∎  a packet: a package of peanuts. ∎  (also package deal) a set of proposals or terms offered or agreed to as a whole: a package of economic reforms. ∎ inf. a package tour. ∎  Comput. a collection of programs or subroutines with related functionality. • v. [tr.] (usu. be packaged) put into a box or wrapping, esp. for sale: choose products that are packaged in recyclable materials | [as adj.] (packaged) packaged foods. ∎  present (someone or something) in a particular way, esp. to make them more attractive: [as adj.] (packaged) everything became a carefully packaged photo opportunity. ∎  combine (various products) for sale as one unit: films would be packaged with the pictures of a production company. ∎  commission and produce (a book, typically a highly illustrated one) to sell as a complete product to publishers: it's a question of trying to package the book properly. DERIVATIVES: pack·ag·er n.

package
1. See application package.

2. In Ada, a self-contained collection of entities (data objects and procedures) that are available for other parts of a program to use. A package consists of two parts that can be separately compiled: its specification and its body. The specification provides the public information about the entities that the package makes available, in the form of declarations of constants, variables, and data types, and procedure headers. It may also contain a private part giving further information about types and constants that is needed by the compiler but not by a programmer using the package. The package body contains the procedure bodies for the procedures that form part of the package, together with local variables and types that these procedures may need. The separation of specification and body means that the implementation of the procedures is hidden from the users, thus a package is a realization of an abstract data type.

Similar features are found in other languages, particularly Modula 2: here the term module is used in preference to package. In Modula 2 a module comprises a definition part and an implementation part, corresponding to the specification and body of the Ada package. The main difference is that the definition part of a module contains declarations of all the objects required by the module, together with an export list specifying which objects are visible outside the module.