An ANSI, typically lower case name that uses a dash (-) instead of spaces. These names are often used by packaging systems like RPM, DPKG, emerge and so on. Short names do not have to be globally unique, they exist for convenience only.
An expression of the form A.B, where A and B are integers. Interfaces are assigned a version, and all interfaces where A is the same are backwards compatible. Therefore if an interface of for instance 2.5 also effectively provides 2.4, 2.3, 2.1 and 2.0, but not 1.x or 3.x
The software version is a semi-opaque string that might (or might not) be meaningful to humans. It is generally assigned to a particular release of some software by the maintainers, example software version strings are "4.2", "1.4b", "7.4-pre3", "2000", "XP" and so on.
A skeleton file contains enough information to allow autopackage to detect the presence of an interfaces implementation, and fetch and install one if none is found. It typically comprises of a test script, a notes section, some small amount of metadata and optionally a retrieval script.
A root name is a globally unique identifier based on domain names. It takes the form of "@something.tld/somepath"
Package name that will be shown to the user in their native language, if possible. Should take the form "Product-Name Purpose", IE "Mozilla Web Browser".
Binary relocatability technology - it provides a drop in replacement for macros traditionally used in autotools based projects.