CSC413 Chapter 2: Importance of Text in Multimedia

Importance of Text in a Multimedia Presentation

• Text is a vital element of multimedia menus, navigation systems, and content.
• Developers must use words carefully and accurately to convey meaning.

Factors Affecting Legibility of Text

• Size
• Background and foreground colors
• Leading style

Understanding Fonts and Typefaces

• A typeface is the design of a set of characters.
• A font is a family of graphic characters, including many type sizes and styles (e.g., Verdana, Impact, Times New Roman).
• A collection of characters of a single size and style belongs to a particular typeface family (e.g., Verdana 20-point Bold Italic, Courier 18-point underlined).

Font Characteristics

• Font styles
• Font sizes
• Cases (e.g., uppercase, lowercase)
• Serif vs. sans-serif fonts

Using Text Elements in a Multimedia Presentation

• HTML documents use tags to format text.
• HTML stands for Hypertext Markup Language.
• DHTML (Dynamic Hypertext Markup Language) is an advanced form of HTML that uses Cascading Style Sheets (CSS).
• Common HTML tags include <b> for boldfaced text, </b><b> for ordered lists, and `` for inserting images.

Symbols and Icons

• Symbols are concentrated text in the form of stand-alone graphic constructs that convey meaningful messages.
• Emoticons are symbols used to convey human emotions.
• Icons are symbolic representations of objects and processes.

Choosing Text Fonts

• Consider legibility and readability when choosing a font.
• Avoid using too many font faces.
• Use color purposefully and anti-aliased text.
• Use drop caps and initial caps for accent, and minimize centered text.
• Use white space effectively and animated text to grab attention.

Computers and Text

• 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.

The Font Wars

• PostScript is a method of describing an image in terms of mathematical constructs.
• PostScript characters are scalable and can be drawn faster.
• PostScript fonts have two types: Type 3 and Type 1.

TrueType and OpenType

• TrueType is a system of scalable outline fonts developed by Apple and Microsoft.
• OpenType is a standard developed by Adobe and Microsoft, incorporating the best features of PostScript and TrueType.

Character Sets

• ASCII (American Standard Code for Information Interchange) is a 7-bit coding system.
• The extended character set is commonly filled with ANSI standard characters.
• The ISO-Latin-1 character set is used in HTML pages.
• Unicode is a 16-bit architecture for multilingual text and character encoding.