THE USES OF TEXT IN MULTIMEDIA Lecture 2

O BJECTIVE Media Types Media Types What text is What text is How text is created and stored in the computer How text is created and stored in the computer How text is used in Multimedia Systems How text is used in Multimedia Systems Advantages and Disadvantages of using texts Advantages and Disadvantages of using texts 2

R EVIEW Media Media Temporal Media Temporal Media Non- Temporal Media Non- Temporal Media 3

W HAT IS T EXT Basic media for many multimedia systems Texts in the form of words, sentences and paragraphs is used to communicate thoughts, ideas and facts in nearly every aspect of our lives. Multimedia products depends on text for many things: - to explain how the application work - to guide the user in navigating through the application - deliver the information for which the application was designed 4

W HAT IS T EXT Minimize the texts in multimedia application Texts consists of two structures: Linear Linear Non-Linear Non-Linear 5

L INEAR A single way to progress through the text, starting at the beginning and reading to the end 6

NON- LINEAR Information is represented in a semantic network in which multiple related sections of the text are connected to each other A user may then browse through the sections of the text, jumping from one text section to another. 7

T EXT E LEMENTS Based on creating letters, numbers and special characters. Text elements can be categories into: Alphabet characters : A - Z Numbers : Special characters : Punctuation [., ; …], Sign or Symbols [* & ^ % $ £ ! /\ ~ Also known Character Sets May also include special icon or drawing symbols, mathematical symbols, Greek Letter etc. 8

F ONT VS T YPEFACES Is there a difference? How do we differentiate one with the other? 9

F ONT A font is a collection of characters of a particular size and style belonging to a particular typeface family Usually vary by type sizes and styles The sizes are measured in points This includes the letter set, the number set, and all of the special character and diacritical marks you get by pressing the shift, option, or command/control keys. 10

T YPEFACE A typeface is a family of graphic characters that usually includes many type sizes and styles A typeface contains a series of fonts. For instance, Arial, Arial Black Arial Narrow and Arial Unicode MS are actually 4 fonts under the same family. Arial Typefaces Family 11

F ONTS E FFECTS A numbers of effects that are useful for bringing viewers attention to content: Case: UPPER and lower letter Bold, Italic, Underline, superscript or subscript Embossed Shadow Embossed or Shadow Colours Colours b Strikethrough 12

T YPES OF F ONTS Two classes of fonts Serif Serif Sans Serif Sans Serif 13

S ERIF T EXT Decorative strokes added to the end of a letter's Serifs improve readability by leading the eye along the line of type. Serifs are the best suited for body text. Serif faces are more difficult to read in small scale (smaller than 8pt) and in very large sizes. 14

S AN S ERIF T EXT Sans serif faces doesn't have decorative strokes. A sans serif text has to be read letter by letter. Use sans serif faces for small (smaller than 8pt) and very large sizes. Used for footnotes and headlines 15

T YPES OF F ONTS : E XAMPLES Times New Roman Bookman Rockwell Light Courier New Century Times New Roman Bookman Rockwell Light Courier New Century Examples of Serif fonts Century Gothic Arial Comic Sans MS ImpactTahoma Century Gothic Arial Comic Sans MS ImpactTahoma Examples of San Serif fonts 16

F ONTS AND F ACES Ascender -The part of lowercase letters (such as k, b, and d) that ascends above the x-height of the other lowercase letters in a face. Baseline -The imaginary line on which the majority of the characters in a typeface rest. Descender -The part of lowercase letters (such as y, p, and q) that descends below the baseline of the other lowercase letters in a font face. 17

Weight - The relative darkness of the characters in the various typefaces within a type family, such as thin, light, bold, extra-bold, and black Width - One of the possible variations of a typeface within a type family, such as condensed or extended x-height - Traditionally, x-height is the height of the lowercase letter x 18

INTERCAP Placing an uppercase letter in the middle of a word, called an intercap For examples used in Company and product names such as WordPerfect, OmniPage, PhotoDisc emerged from the computer programming community coders can better recognize the words they used for variables and commands when the words were lowercase but intercapped. 19

T RACKING, K ERNING AND L EADING AvvA Unkerned Kerned 20

Reading Line One Leading Ascender: Ascender: an upstroke on a character Descender: Descender: the down stroke below the baseline of a character Leading : Leading : spacing above and below a font or Line spacing Tracking: Tracking: spacing between characters Kerning: Kerning: space between pairs of characters, usually as an overlap for improvement appearance 21

T EXT C HARACTERISTICS FD xhp Descender Capital Height Ascender Serif x-Height This example shows the Times New Roman font p -Height 22

B IT M APPED S YSTEM F ONTS Computers and devices use two methods to represent fonts. One is a bit-mapped font where every character is represented by an arrangement of dots. To print a bit-mapped character, a printer simply locates the character's bit-mapped representation stored in memory and prints the corresponding dots. Each different font, even when the typeface is the same, requires a different set of bit-maps. 23

V ECTOR G RAPHICS F ONTS The second method uses a vector graphics system to define fonts. In vector graphics systems, the shape or outline of each character is defined geometrically. The typeface can be displayed in any size, so a single font description really represents innumerable fonts. For this reason, vector fonts are called scalable fonts as they can be scaled to any size. A scalable font is really one font in which the outlines of each character are geometrically defined. 24

B ITMAPPED AND VECTOR FONTS A bitmapped font A vector font 25

T EXT D ATA F ILES The common data encoding schemes for text are: Plain text Plain text (ASCII) is text in an electronic format that can be read and interpreted by humans Rich text Rich text is similar but it also embeds special control characters into the text to provide additional features Hypertext Hypertext is an advance on rich text which allows the reader to jump to different sections within the document or even jump to a new document 26

T EXT D ATA F ILES Plain text This is plain text. It is readable by humans. It can contains numbers (01234) and punctuation since it uses the ASCII character set. Plain text This is plain text. It is readable by humans. It can contains numbers (01234) and punctuation since it uses the ASCII character set. Rich text This is rich text. It is also readable by humans but contains additional tags which control the presentation of the text. Rich text This is rich text. It is also readable by humans but contains additional tags which control the presentation of the text. Hypertext This is hypertext. It uses the rich text format shown above but adds the ability to hyperlink to other documents. Hypertext 27

U SING T EXT IN M ULTIMEDIA The text elements used in multimedia are: Menus for navigation Interactive buttons Fields for reading HTML documents Symbols and icons 28

W ORKING W ITH T EXT Considerations and guidelines when we are working with text: Be Concise Use the appropriate typefaces and fonts Make it readable Consider type styles and colors Use restraint and be consistent 29

D ESIGNING WITH T EXT If message is a part of interactive project or website where user is seeking information, great deal of text can be packed on the screen. Too little text on the screen requires annoying page turns and unnecessary mouse clicks and waits. Too much text can make the screen seem overcrowded and unpleasant. If the message is presentation slides for public speaking Use bulleted points on large fonts and few words with lots of white space – audience should focus on the speaker rather than reading the slides. 30

P ORTRAIT VS L ANDSCAPE Portrait taller-than-wide Printed docs Landscape Wider than tall Monitor screens 31

S OLUTIONS IF TEXT IS LONGER THAN BLOCK OF TEXT Use scrolling field Put the text into a graphic image in a project window, and let the user move the whole window up or down upon command. This is most appropriate when you need to present text with page breaks and formatting identical to the printed document. This is used by Acrobat Reader for displaying PDF files. Break the text into fields, fit on monitor-sized pages, and design control buttons to flip through these pages 32

A DVANTAGES AND D ISADVANTAGES OF USING TEXTS Advantages Is relatively inexpensive to produce Present abstract ideas effectively Clarifies other media Provides confidentiality Is easily changed or updated Disadvantages Is less memorable than other visual media Requires more attention from the user than other media Can be cumbersome 33

A SSIGNMENT Difference between ASCII and unicode 34