Chapter Two

Multimedia Element:
TEXT
Let’s start!
Chapter Highlights
01 02 03
Power of Text Codes for
Text Tradition Computer Text

04 05 06
Font Multimedia Guidelines
Technologies Text Using Text
 Powers of Text
• Multimedia developers value text for:
– Universality
– Clarity
– Efficiency
– Powers of abstraction, engagement, and
suggestion
• Developers can explore new uses for text in a
media-rich environment.
Text Tradition
• Text properties are grounded in the
print tradition.
• Typeface is a family of characters
sharing a common design.
– Arial
– Chicago
– New York
– Palatino
Text Tradition
Typefaces are commonly categorized as:
– Serif
– Sans serif
– Script
– Symbols
Text Tradition
• Style: appearance of characters such as:
– Bold
– Italic
– Underline
• Point size: measure of type size.
Point is approximately 1/72
of an inch.
Pica is 12 points
6 picas = 1 inch.
Text Tradition
• Font
– Complete set of characters of a particular
typeface, style, and size.
– Monospaced fonts: same width assigned to
each character.
– Proportional fonts: adjust width based on shape.

• Case Aa
– Upper and lower case.
Text Tradition
• Weight
– Line thickness of the typeface.
– Arial Black has heavier weight.
• Kerning
– Adjusting spacing between specific letters.
• Tracking
– Adjusting spacing between all characters.
Text Tradition
• Condensed/extended text
– Narrow width of text / widen width of text.

• Leading
– Spacing between lines.

• Alignment & Justification

– Alignment positions text relative to
document's margins.
– Justification adjusts line length to produce
straight edges on left and right margins.
Computer
Text
From Printed Characters to Digital Text
Computer Text Codes
• Coding schemes assign a group of binary
numbers to represent a digital character.
• ASCII
– 7-bit code = 128 characters.
– Extended ASCII or ASCII-8
= 256 characters.

• All computers understand ASCII.

American Standard Code for Information Interchange
Computer Text Codes
• RTF (Rich Text Format)
– Developed by Microsoft for cross platform
text files.
– Reproduces the formatting of original file.
• Unicode
– New standard 16 bit code that provides for
more than 65,000 characters.
– Goal is to include multilingual text in a digital
coding standard.
View IT
Unicode
project.
Font Technologies
• Two techniques for displaying text on
computer:

Bitmapped fonts
Outline fonts
Bitmapped Fonts
• They are actually dot-matrix layouts of letters.
• Pixels that make the letter are described by a
binary code, or a "mapping" of the character.
– Every character is stored as a bitmapped
letter, number, or symbol.
– Require large memory and storage capacity.
Bitmapped Fonts
• Advantages
– Precise control over letter appearance.
– Letters can be edited at pixel level.

• Disadvantages
– Letters can't be easily scaled.
– Requires separate bitmaps for each
typeface, style, and point size to be used.
– Requires large storage capacities.
– Limits flexibility in use of text fonts to those
stored on the computer.
Outline Fonts
• Outline fonts are geometric designs for
how a letter looks.
• Store a description of the character to be
displayed.
– Description is a series of commands to
create the letter on the computer display.
• Outline font technology:
– Adobe Postscript
– TrueType
 Outline Fonts
• Advantages
– Fonts are easily scaled.
– Requires smaller storage capacity.

• Disadvantages
– Commands can't be edited to create
unique characters.
– Font families are controlled through license
of Postscript and TrueType fonts.
Jaggies and Text
• Text is displayed on a monitor as a pattern of
pixels.
– Pixels are generally very small squares.
– Squares can display straight lines with
smooth edges.
– Squares that display curved or diagonal
lines produce a stair-stepped effect called
JAGGIES.
Anti-Aliasing the Jaggies
• Jaggies produce an alias of the true character.
• Anti-aliasing creates a smooth edge by
blending the color of the text with the color of the
background.
Installed Fonts – The Problem
• ASCII and Unicode are standard.
• Fonts are not standardized across computer
platforms.
– If the font is not available on the computer, it
will substitute one that is.
– The result may not be acceptable.
• Solution
– Use only widely available fonts.
– Package the unique font with the application.
Multimedia Text
• Two main forms:
– Editable: text produced by word processors or
text editors.
• Easy to alter content.
• Can search and spell check.
– Graphics: image of text that can be
manipulated to produce a wide range of
artistic effects.
• Make original word picture.
• Solves problem of installed fonts.
Multimedia Text and Sound
• Speech recognition: software analyzes human
speech and converts words to editable text.
– Requires specialized "intelligent" software.
– Accuracy may depend on training and
speaker's voice.
• Speech synthesis: software analyzes text and
reproduces it as spoken words.
Text and Interactivity
• Hypertext is linked text.
– User interacts with links to trace relationships of
words and ideas created by the author.
• Structure consists of:
Hyperlink
– Nodes text can
take you
– Link anchor places.
– Link markers
• Hypermedia is an information structure based on
linked media.
Text for The WWW
• HTML: hypertext markup language.
– Contains "tags" used to specify the structure
of the document and format the text and
media.
– Browser interprets the "tags" and displays the
"page" on a client computer.
• HTML limitations:
– Limited set of tags to create a page.
– Difficult to precisely define a page appearance.
• Some browsers and client computers may
present the html page differently from other
browsers.
CSS and XHTML
• Cascading Style Sheets (CSS)
– An addition to HTML
– Separates content of page from
formatting commands
– Easier to edit and maintain consistent
appearance of a site.
• eXtensible HTML (XHTML)
– A blending of HTML and XML
– XML supports more powerful data
manipulation
– XHTML improves page display on mobile
devices
Portable Document Format (PDF)
• PDF files maintain original formatting of
documents across computer platforms.
– Platform and application independent.
– Support multiple media and user interaction.
– Require a reader program to view the file and
an application to convert a document to pdf
format.
• Adobe Acrobat Reader is a free download.
• PDFCreator is a free open source converter.
Adding Text to Multimedia Application
Several methods to incorporate text in an
authoring application.
– Direct entry in a text box or text field.
– Copy and paste from existing text source.
– File import for large text files.
– Scan text with OCR application for text that
exists only in print media.
• Optical Character Recognition accuracy will
vary based on fonts and quality of source
material.
Guidelines for Text in Multimedia Application
• Be selective
• Be brief
• Make text readable
• Be consistent
• Be careful
• Be respectful
• Combine text with other media
• Make text interactive
Wrap Up
• Traditional text features
• Computer text codes
• Font technologies
• Multimedia text
• Adding text to multimedia applications
• Guidelines for using text
Key Term Check Up
Alignment Hypermedia Point
Anti-aliasing Hypertext Proportional font
ASCII Jaggies RTF
Bitmapped fonts Justification Sans serif
Browser Kerning Serif
Case Leading Speech recognition
Condensed text Link Anchor Speech synthesis
Editable text Link Markers Style
Extended text Monospaced font Tracking
Font Nodes Typeface
Font technologies OCR Unicode
Graphics text Outline fonts Weight
HTML PDF XHTML
XML