MULTIMEDIA TECHNOLOGY Chapter 8

TEXT By: Dr. Zeeshan Bhatti

IMPORTANCE OF TEXT IN A
MULTIMEDIA PRESENTATION
Words and symbols in any form, spoken or written, are the most
common means of communication.
Text is a vital element of multimedia menus, navigation systems,
and content.
FACTORS AFFECTING LEGIBILITY OF
TEXT
–Size
–Background and foreground colors
–Style
–Leading
UNDERSTANDING FONTS AND
TYPEFACES
•A typeface is a family of graphic characters,
often with many type sizes and styles.
•A font is a collection of characters of a single
size and style belonging to a particular
typeface family
UNDERSTANDING FONTS AND
TYPEFACES (CONTINUED)
•The study of fonts and typefaces includes the following:
–Font styles
–Font sizes
–Cases
–Serif versus sans serif
UNDERSTANDING FONTS AND
TYPEFACES (CONTINUED)

•Font styles include:

–Boldface
–Italic
–Underlining
–Outlining
•Font sizes
–Font size is measured in points.
–Character metrics are the general measurements applied
to individual characters.
–Kerning is the spacing between character pairs.
–Leading is the space between lines.
Cases
–A capitalized letter is referred to as uppercase, while a
small letter is referred to as lowercase.
–Placing an uppercase letter in the middle of a word is
referred to as an intercap.
SERIF VERSUS SANS SERIF
–A serif is the little decoration at the end of a letter stroke.
–Serif fonts are used for body text.
–Sans serif fonts do not have a serif at the end of a letter stroke.
–These fonts are used for headlines and bold statements.
FONT CHARACTERISTICS
A font is a collection of characters of a single size and
style, belong to a typeface family typical font styles are
boldface, italic, bold italic, and underlined
font sizes are expressed in terms of points, where one point is .0138
or 1/72 inch, where size is the distance from the top of capital
letters to the bottom of descenders in lower-case letters such as g
and j.
Times is a typeface; Times 12-point italic is a font
In computer’s however, people say “font” when “typeface” would be
more accurate.

A typeface is a family of graphic characters that usually

includes many type sizes and styles e.g., Times, Courier
and Helvetica are typefaces, each of which include many
sizes & styles
FONT CHARACTERISTICS (CONTINUE)
Leading (pronounced “ledding”) is the space between
lines of text. It is generally recommended to increasing the
leading to improve readability of text on a screen
Character metrics are the measurements of individual
characters.
 Vector-based fonts permit changes to character metrics for interesting
effects; bit-based fonts do not
FONT CHARACTERISTICS (CONTINUE)
Kerning is the spacing between character pairs. Some
fonts have variable kerning (e.g., Times), so have fixed
kerning (e.g., Courier).When is fixed kerning more
desirable? (Computer code) What about variable kerning?
A serif font has little decorations at the end of each letter
stroke.
Times and Century Schoolbook are examples of serif fonts; Arial is a
sans serif font
On printed pages, serif fonts are traditionally used for body text
because they help guide the reader’s eye along the line of text
Headlines use sans serif text
Computer screens, with 72-dpi (dots per inch), don’t provide as much
resolution as print, so it can be argued sans serif fonts are more
legible in small sizes hence, UM standardized on 12-point Arial font
(in Windows)
THE TEXT ELEMENTS USED IN
MULTIMEDIA ARE
–Menus for navigation
–Interactive buttons
–Fields for reading
–HTML documents
–Symbols and icons
CHOOSING TEXT FONTS
IN A MULTIMEDIA
–Consider legibility and readability.
–Avoid too many faces.
–Use color purposefully.
SYMBOLS AND ICONS IN A
MULTIMEDIA
–Symbols are concentrated text in the form of stand-alone
graphic constructs.
–They are used to convey meaningful messages.
SYMBOLS AND ICONS IN A
MULTIMEDIA
–Symbols used to convey human emotions are called
emoticons.
–Icons are symbolic representations of objects and
processes.
COMPUTERS AND TEXT
•The font wars
 –PostScript
 –TrueType
 –OpenType

PostScript, TrueType, and OpenType outline fonts allow

text to be drawn at any size without jaggies. Anti-aliasing
text and graphics creates “smooth” boundaries between
colors.
COMPUTERS AND TEXT (CONTINUED)
PostScript
PostScript is a method of describing an image in terms of
mathematical constructs.
PostScript is vector-based, describing each character in terms of
mathematical constructs (Bezier curves), so that each character can be
scaled
PostScript characters are scalable and can be drawn much faster.
The two types of PostScript fonts are Type 3 and Type 1.
This facilitates drawing characters at various sizes and in various
resolutions
COMPUTERS AND TEXT
(CONTINUED)
TrueType
 Apple and Microsoft developed the TrueType methodology.
 TrueType is a system of scalable outline fonts and can draw characters at
low resolution.
 Apple apparently didn’t like Adobe’s approach, so they later (circa 1989)
introduced TrueType
TrueType also uses a quadratic curves outline font method, which Apple and
others claim produces a smoother characters
Now Truetype is generally available on all Windows and Macintosh systems
Both PostScript and TrueType fonts allow text to be drawn on any size
without jaggies or jagged edges on the outlines of a character, such as in a
bold italic style
Anti-alaising exploits color by blending (or dithering) the colors along the
edges of letter
Since PostScript and TrueType are now fairly universal, it’s fairly safe
to use them without worrying about portability, though not all fonts are
identical on each platform
CHARACTER SETS
 The American Standard Code for Information Interchange (ASCII) is a
8-bit coding system.
 The extended character set is commonly filled with ANSI standard
characters.
 The ISO-Latin-1 character set is used while programming the text of
HTML pages.
Unicode is a 16-bit architecture for multilingual text and character
encoding.
The shared symbols of each character set are unified into collections
of symbols called scripts.
FONT EDITING AND DESIGN TOOLS
•FontLab, Ltd.
•Font Creator
FONTOGRAPHER
 Fontographer is a specialized graphics editor.
 It is compatible with both Macintosh and Windows
platforms.
 It can be used to develop PostScript, TrueType, and
OpenType fonts.
 It can also modify existing typefaces and incorporate
PostScript artwork.
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BY: DR. ZEESHAN BHATTI 24