[Unix; common] To bring a task 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 timesharing 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.
