Introduction
Text is obviously the simplest of data types and requires the least amount
of storage.
Text in the form of words, sentences, and paragraphs is used to
communicate thoughts, ideas, and facts in daily life.
Text may not be as visually exciting as some of the other media types,
but it often conveys essential and precise information.
Text is probably the most common form of information delivery.
Text In Multimedia
In creating multimedia applications, any text placed on screen should
make sense and can be interpreted accurately and correctly.
Text is different from fonts, text is more important than fonts because it is
used to effectively communicate to the user in terms of multimedia
applications.
Text is one of the basic media elements and perhaps the easiest to
manipulate.
Readability Issue
It is difficult for a person to read text on screen than in print.
Text on screen must be selected properly to convey the correct
information.
Choose only the most essential information that will be displayed on
screen.
Categories of Text elements
Alphabet characters – A – Z and a – z
Numbers – 0 – 9
Special characters
o - Punctuation (. , ; “ ‘ ! : - /)
o Signs ($ + - = @ # % ^ & *)
Obtaining Text
Text can be captured in following ways:
o Keyboard
o Mouse
o Scanner (OCR) – Optical Character Recognition* * designed to
translate images of handwritten or typewritten text (usually
captured by a scanner) into machine-editable text.
Fonts & Faces
Typeface – Graphic representation or the shape of characters.
A typeface is a family of related fonts – Example : Arial
Font – Collection of characters of different sizes and styles of a typeface.
- Pertains to the style of lettering – Example : Arial 18 point Bold
Major factors that affect text
FONT PROPERTIES (Font Size, Font Style, Font Color)
TEXT ARRANGEMENT (Text Alignment, Text Margins, Text Spacing)
Major Category of Font
Serif Fonts
Preferred for printed materials with lengthy text like in newspapers,
magazines, and books.
More readable when printed compared to the computer screen.
Examples of serif fonts include: – Times New Roman, Garamond, Bodoni, –
Bookman Old Style
Sans-Serif Fonts
Often used as font for headlines, headings, and titles / subtitles in printed
materials.
Preferred for text on Web or Multimedia applications because it is
perceived to be more readable.
Examples of sans-serif fonts include: – Arial, Tahoma, Century Gothic,
Verdana, Helvetica
Script Fonts
Script fonts are also called Cursive fonts.
Often used as font for formal invitations, posters, and greeting cards.
Never used as the font for body text on Web or Multimedia applications.
Examples of script fonts: – Edwardian Script, BlackJack, Brush Script, Snell
Roundhand, Zapfino, L u ci d a H a n d w ri ti n g
Monospaced Fonts
Monospaced fonts were created as a mimic to the typewriter font.
All characters have equal width.
Often used for programming code and displaying formulas.
Never used as the font for body text on Web or Multimedia applications.
Example of Monospaced Fonts
Courier, Lucida Console, Monaco, Lucida Typewriter
Font mapping
Some fonts installed in your machine may not be available in other user’s
machine.
If the fonts that you used is not available in other people’s computer, a
default font will be used for substitution.
Specifying which font to be substitution is called font mapping.
Font Size
Font is measured in Points.
Font style
It is used to emphasize text.
Fonts have three generalstyles asfollows:
o Bold – this is used to emphasize a word by making it standout
thickly. Bold is usually applied to stress keywords or important
terminologies in text.
o Italic – this is used to highlight cited text. Usually, italics are used to
emphasize text directly lifted from a reference or a quotation.
o Underlined – this limitsits use to hyperlinks or hypertext.
Text Color
Text on screen usually appears over a particular background color.
Colors are quite important because they catch the attention of the target
users.
Text color is even more important because it is directly applied to text.
Bad color choices may lead to unreadable text.
But the main objective is to achieve a good contrast and harmony
between the foreground text color and the background colorsto ensure
readability.
Text Spacing
The space between lines of text is called Leading.
Common line spacing includes double spacing, 1.5 spacing, and single
spacing.
Adding space between lines of text also improves readability on screen.
