Chapter 2: Text

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 Lesson Outcome

• Importance of text in a multimedia

presentation
• Understanding fonts and typefaces
• Using text elements in a multimedia
presentation
• Computers and text
• Font editing and design tools
• Multimedia and hypertext

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 Importance of Text
in a Multimedia Presentation

• Words, symbols in any form, are the most

common means of communication.
• Usage: menus, navigation systems, content

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 Importance of Text
in a Multimedia Presentation (continued)

• The power of meaning

– Multimedia developers
must use words carefully,
accurately.

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 Importance of Text
in a Multimedia Presentation (continued)

• Factors affecting text legibility:

– Size
– Background, foreground colors
– Style
– Leading

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 Understanding Fonts and Typefaces

• Typeface
• family of graphic characters
• many type sizes, styles
• Font
• collection of characters of a single size,
style
• belong to a particular typeface family

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 Understanding Fonts and Typefaces
(continued)

• study of fonts and typefaces includes

following:
– Font styles (BOLD, ITALIC, BOLD AND ITALIC)

– Font sizes (20, 40, 60…..)

– Cases (lowercase, UPPERCASE..)

– Serif ( TIMES NEW ROMAN…..)versus

sans serif (ARIAL…)

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 Understanding Fonts and Typefaces
(continued)

• Font styles include:

– Boldface
– Italic
– Underlining

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 Understanding Fonts and Typefaces
(continued)

• Font sizes
– Unit: points
– Character metrics: general measurements applied
to individual characters
– Kerning: space between character pairs
– Leading: space between lines

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 Understanding Fonts and Typefaces
(continued)

• Cases
– CAPITALIZED: UPPERCASE
small letter: lowercase

– Placing an uppercase letter in the middle of a

word is referred to as an interCap

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 Understanding Fonts and Typefaces
(continued)

Serif Sans serif

“tail” at the end of / x
a letter stroke

Usage body text headlines, bold

statements

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 Using Text Elements
in a Multimedia Presentation

• text elements used in multimedia:

– Menus for navigation
– Interactive buttons
– Fields for reading
– HTML documents

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 Using Text Elements
in a Multimedia Presentation (continued)

• Choosing text fonts

– Legibility/ readability
– Avoid too many faces
– Color

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 Using Text Elements
in a Multimedia Presentation (continued)

• Choosing text fonts

– Use anti-aliased text.
– Use drop caps and
initial caps for accent.
– Minimize centered text.
– Use white space.
– Use animated text to
grab attention.

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 Using Text Elements
in a Multimedia Presentation (continued)

• Symbols
– concentrated text in the form of stand-alone
graphic constructs.
– convey meaningful messages.

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 Using Text Elements
in a Multimedia Presentation (continued)

• icons
– Emoticons: convey human emotions
– symbolic representations of objects and processes

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 Using Text Elements
in a Multimedia Presentation (continued)

• Menus for navigation

– user navigates through content using menu.
– simple menu consists text list of topics.

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 Using Text Elements
in a Multimedia Presentation (continued)

• Interactive buttons
– Button: clickable object that executes a command
when activated.
– Users can create their own buttons from bitmap,
graphics.
– Design, labeling should be treated as industrial art
project.

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 Using Text Elements
in a Multimedia Presentation (continued)
• Fields for reading
– Reading hard copy easier, faster than reading from
computer screen
– document can be printed in 2 orientations:
– Portrait: taller-than-wide
– Landscape: wider-than-tall

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 Using Text Elements
in a Multimedia Presentation (continued)

• HTML (Hypertext Markup Language) documents

– marked using tags. E.g:
– <B> tag: bold
– <OL> tag: ordered list
– <IMG> tag: insert image
– advanced HTML: DHTML (Dynamic Hypertext Markup
Language)
– DHTML uses Cascading Style Sheets (CSS)

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 Computers and Text (continued)

• 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.

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 Computers and Text (continued)
• PostScript
– By Adobe
– Method: describe image in terms of mathematical constructs
– a very popular format for graphic designers
– Their files have 2 parts:
– printer font: flawless on paper
– screen font: have shortcomings
– Versions: PS level 1, PS level 2, PS 3
– Pros: smooth, detailed, high quality, scalable, drawn much faster
– often used for printing, especially professional-quality printing,
such as books, magazines

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 Computers and Text (continued)

• TrueType
– By Apple & Microsoft
– a system of scalable outline fonts, can draw characters at low
resolution
– combine screen and printer font in single file
– Pros:
– prints well
– easy to read on screen
– Scalable; clear and readable in all sizes
– can be sent to any printer or other output device that is
supported by Windows

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 Computers and Text (continued)

• OpenType
– By Adobe & Microsoft
– international standard
– Pros:
– incorporates best features of PostScript & TrueType
– related to TrueType fonts, but incorporate greater extension of
the basic character set
– clear and readable in all sizes
– can be sent to any printer or other output device supported
by Windows
– used when you need a large character set for language coverage
and fine typography

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 Computers and Text (continued)
• Character sets
American Standard Code for Information Interchange (ASCII)
– 7-bit coding system
– Assigns a no or value to 128 characters which include:
– Uppercase letters
– Lowercase letters
– Punctuation marks
– Arabic numbers
– Math symbols
– 32 control characters (e.g tab, line feed)
– E.g no 65= uppercase letter A

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 Character sets (continued)
ANSI (American National Standards Institute)
– The extended character set is commonly filled with ANSI standard
characters
– Includes foreign characters, special punctuation, business symbols

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 Character sets (continued)
The ISO-Latin-1

– used while programming the text of HTML pages

– developed by International Organization for Standardization
(ISO)
– superset of the ASCII character set
– very similar to the ANSI character set used in Windows,
though not identical
– HTTP, HTML protocols used on WWW are based on ISO
Latin-1
– to represent non-ASCII characters on a Web page, you need
to use the corresponding ISO Latin-1 code

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 Character sets (continued)
Unicode

– 16-bit architecture for multilingual text and character

encoding
– Include characters from all known languages and
alphabets in the world
– The shared symbols of each character set are unified
into collections of symbols called scripts
– HTML allows access to Unicode by numeric ref
– E.g &#x6C34; = Chinese character for water

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 Computers and Text (continued)

• Mapping across platforms

– Fonts and characters are not cross-platform
compatible.
– They must be mapped to the other machine using
font substitution.
– E.g Mac: Halvetica------Win: Arial

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 Font Editing and Design Tools

• FontLab, Ltd. (www.fontlab.com)

• Creating attractive texts

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 Font Editing and Design Tools
(continued)

• Fontographer
– specialized font editor
– Macintosh, Windows compatible
– can be used to develop PostScript, TrueType, and
OpenType fonts
– can also modify existing typefaces

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 Multimedia and Hypertext

• Multimedia
• Hypertext systems
• Using hypertext systems
• Searching for words
• Hypermedia structures
• Hypertext tools

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 Multimedia and Hypertext
(continued)

• Multimedia
• combination of text, graphics, and audio
elements into a single presentation
• Interactive multimedia
• When user assumes control over
presentation
• Hypermedia
• when a structure of linked elements provided
to user for navigation, interaction

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 Multimedia and Hypertext
(continued)

• Hypertext systems
– organized cross-linking of words, images, and
other Web elements
– words are keyed or indexed to other words
– enables user to navigate through text in non-
linear way

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 Multimedia and Hypertext
(continued)

• Using hypertext systems

– Information management and hypertext programs
present electronic text, images, and other elements
in a database fashion
– Software robots visit web pages and index entire
web sites.

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 Multimedia and Hypertext
(continued)

• Using hypertext systems (continued)

– Hypertext databases make use of proprietary
indexing systems.
– Server-based hypertext and database engines are
widely available.

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 You have 12 black socks and 12 white socks
mixed up in a drawer.

You're up very early and it's too dark to tell

them apart.

What's the smallest number of socks you

need to take out (blindly) to be sure of having
a matching pair?

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 Multimedia and Hypertext
(continued)

• Typical methods for word searching in hypermedia

systems:
– Categorical: selecting/limiting docs, pages, fields of text
within which to search for word(s)
– Word relationship: searching words according to
proximity/order
– E.g party AND beer
– Adjacency: searching for words occurring next to one
another
– E.g black widow
– Alternates : applying OR to search 2 or more words
– E.g: bacon OR eggs
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 Multimedia and Hypertext
(continued)

– Association: applying AND to search 2 or more words

– Negation: applying NOT
– Truncation: searching for a word with any of its possible
suffixes
– E.g to find all occurrences for “girl” and “girls”
= girl#
– Intermediate words: searching for words that occur
between what might normally be adjacent words
– Frequency: searching for words based on how often they
appear

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 Multimedia and Hypertext
(continued)

• Hypermedia structures
– Links
– Nodes
– Anchors
– Navigating hypermedia structures

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 Multimedia and Hypertext
(continued)

• Nodes
– Concepts/ ideas
– can contain text, graphics, animation, audio, video,
images, programs
– Nodes are connected to other nodes by links
– Node from which a link originates: reference/link anchors
anchor
– Node at which a link ends: referent/link end
– contents of a node are displayed by activating links.

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 Multimedia and Hypertext
(continued)

• Links
– connect related concepts (nodes)
– can be bidirectional: facilitating backward traversals.
– can be typed (such as specification link, elaboration link,
membership link, opposition link and others) specifying
the nature of relationship
– can be:
– referential (cross-referencing)
– hierarchical (parent-child relationships)

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 Multimedia and Hypertext
(continued)
• Navigating hypermedia structures
– simplest way to navigate hypermedia structures:
buttons
– Location markers: make navigation user-friendly

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 Multimedia and Hypertext
(continued)

• 2 functions common to most hypermedia

text management systems:
• building (authoring)
• functions of builder:
– Creating links
– Identifying nodes
– Generating index of words
• reading

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 Multimedia and Hypertext
(continued)

• Hypertext systems are used for:

– Electronic publishing and reference works
– Technical documentation
– Educational courseware
– Interactive kiosks
– Electronic catalogs

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 Summary

• Text is one of the most important

elements of multimedia
• standard document format used
for web pages: HTML
• Dynamic HTML uses Cascading Style Sheets
(CSS) for greater control over design
• hypertext system enables user to
navigate through text in non-linear way

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 You are the bus driver.

At your first stop, you pick up 29 people.

On your second stop, 18 of those 29 people get off, and

at the same time 10 new passengers arrive.

At your next stop, 3 of those 10 passengers get off, and

13 new passengers come on.

On your fourth stop 4 of the remaining 10 passengers get

off, 6 of those new 13 passengers get off as well, then 17
new passengers get on.

What is the color of the bus driver's eyes?

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