Text
Table of Content
1. Introduction of text.
2. Text elements.
3. Types of text.
4. Fonts and typefaces.
5. Font Terminology.
6. Classification of fonts.
7. Font styles.
8. Font types.
9. Bitmapped and Vector fonts.
10. Font appearance.
11. Guidelines of choosing fonts.
12. Efficient use of text.
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.
…continued
• Multimedia applications depend on text for many things
including:
- Page titles
- Delivering information in form of multiple sentences /
paragraphs
- Labels for pictures
- Instructions for operating the application
• Text is probably the most common form of information
delivery.
Text elements
• Alphabet characters
• A – Z and a – z
• Numbers
• 0–9
• Special characters
- Punctuation (. , ; “ ‘ ! : - /)
- Signs ($ + - = @ # % ^ & *)
Obtaining Text
• Text can be captured in following ways:
• Keyboard
• Mouse
• Scanner (OCR) – Optical Character Recognization*
* designed to translate images of handwritten or typewritten text
(usually captured by a scanner) into machine-editable text.
Types of Text
Unformatted text (Plaintext)
• comprise strings of fixed-sized characters from a limited
character set.
Formatted text (Richtext)
• comprise strings of characters of different styles, size and
shape together with tables, graphics and image inserted at
appropriate point.
• Example: Rich Text Format (RTF), HTML, .doc
Types of Text
Hypertext
• It enables the integrated set of documents (each comprising
formatted text) to be created which have defined linkages
between them.
Unformatted Text
This is a set of characters that
are available in the ASCII
(American Standard Code
for Information Interchange)
character set. This is one of
the most widely used character
sets and the table includes the
binary codeword used to
represent each character.
Basic ASCII character set
ASCII Code
ASCII Code
• Each character is represented by a unique 7-bit binary codeword,
meaning that there are 128 (27) alternative characters.
• In addition to all normal alphabetic, numeric and punctuation
characters, the total ASCII character set also includes control
characters such as BS (backspace), DEL (delete), etc.
…continued
Extended Character Set (ISO Latin-1) Extended
• Extra 1 bit in ASCII is filled with ANSI Characters
(American National Standards Institution)
characters (256 characters) ¢ ä ü
Unicode
• Unicode is the universal standard for multi
language characters published by Unicode
Consortium.
• Unicode 4.0 standard covers 96,382 characters Unicode
using 16 bits uniform encoding. Characters
• Unicode can support a wide variety of non-
Roman alphabets including Han Chinese,
ﺍﺏﺙﺚﺝﺡﺥ
Japanese, Arabic, Korean, Bengali, and so on. αβγδεζ
Formatted Text
• An example of formatted text is that produced by most word
processing packages. It enables documents to be created that consist
of characters of different styles and variable size and shape, each of
which can be plain, bold, or italicized.
• In addition, a variety of document formatting options are supported
to enable an author to structure a document into chapters, sections
and paragraphs, each of which with different headings and with
tables, graphics and pictures inserted at appropriate points.
Hypertext
Hypertext is a type of formatted
text that enables a related set of
documents, normally referred to
as pages, to be created which
have defined linkage points,
referred to as hyperlinks, between
each other.
Figure 2.3. Example of an electronic
Document written in hypertext
Fonts & Typefaces
• Font
• Collection of characters of different sizes and styles of a
typeface.
• Example : Arial 18 point Bold
• Typeface
• Graphic representation or the shape of characters.
A typeface is a family of related fonts
• Example : Bookman Old Style
337
Font Terminology
• Baseline – the line on which the bases of characters are arranged
• Leading – the distance between successive baselines
• x-height – the distance between the baseline and the top of a lower-case
letter x
• Ascenders/descenders – strokes that rise above the x-height/drop
below the baseline
• Kerning – adjustment of space between certain pairs of letters (e.g.
AV) to make them look more uniform
Font Terminology
• Tracking - Spacing between characters.
• Serif - Flag or decoration at the end of a character stroke.
327–330
Classification of Fonts
•Spacing: monospaced (fixed width)/proportional
•Serifs: serifed/sans serif
Serifs are the small strokes added to the ends of character
shapes in conventional book fonts
•Shape: upright/italic/slanted
Slant is a vertical shear effect, italic uses different glyph shapes
with a slant
•Weight: bold/normal/light
This example shows the Times New Roman font
Ascender
Cap height X-height
FD xhp
Point size Serif Baseline Descender
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Serif
Tracking
Ascender
BD hp
Av
Kerning
Descender
Reading line one. Leading
Reading line two.
Tracking and Kerning
AvUnkerned
Av
Kerned
Serif and sans serif fonts
Fonts can broadly be said to be of one of two types: serif or
sans serif
A serif is the decorative ‘bit’ at the end of a letter stroke
Serif fonts have them and sans serif fonts don’t (‘sans’ being French
for ‘without’)
Serif fonts are usually used for printed media or documents
that have large quantities of text.
This is because the serif helps guide the reader’s eye along the line
Sans Serif fonts are considered better for computer displays
because of the sharper contrast.
Serif
Serif fonts
fonts Sans
Sans serif
serif fonts
fonts
Times New Roman Arial
Bookman Old Style Tahoma
Monotype Corsiva Impact
Courier New Verdana
Font Styles
Bold, Italic, Underline, Strikethrough, superscript or
subscript, embossed or shadow
Colours
Some common fonts used today include:
Arial (or Helvetica)
A sans serif font
Times New Roman (or Times Roman)
A serif font
Courier New (or Courier)
A monospaced font (all characters have the
same width)
Font Types
• PostScript
• Page Description Language
• Uses mathematical construct
• Allows the character to be scaled bigger/smaller; able to be finely printed.
• Needs special software to display
• Needs licensing
• Example: Adobe’s PostScript
• TrueType
• Page Description Language
• TrueType is joint effort by Apple & Microsoft.
• Uses mathematical construct.
• In addition to printing smooth chars, it allows chars displayed on low-resolution
monitors.
• No special software needed to display
• No licensing needed
• Bitmap
• Images of characters
• Requires a lot of memory
Bitmapped and vector fonts
Fonts can either be stored as bitmapped or vector
Bitmaps require one bitmap for each size
File size increases as more sizes are added.
Require a lot of memory.
Vector fonts can draw any size by scaling the vector drawing primitives
mathematically
File size is much smaller than bitmaps.
TrueType and PostScript are vector font formats.
Bitmapped and vector fonts
A bitmapped font A vector font
Font Appearance
Rasterization
• Font is drawn on the screen one pixel at a time
• Jaggies are the jagged edges you see when a
bitmapped image is resized
• It is a consequence of the underlying array of
pixels from which the image is composed
Anti-aliasing
• Blend the font into the background color.
• This technique minimizes the jagged edges
making for smoother overall appearance.
• It substitutes additional pixels in other colours to
fool the brain into thinking it is seeing continuous
lines
Meaningful words
• Text is use for titles and headlines, menus,
navigation, and content.
• Too much text – crowded or ‘busy’ screen
• Too little text – too many page
• Words must be chosen carefully
Guideline of choosing fonts
• For small type, do not use decorative fonts because in small
size they are unreadable.
• Use as few typefaces as possible but you can vary the size
and style using italic or bold.
• Adjust the leading or line spacing where you have a lot of
text for easier reading.
• Vary the size of a font according to the importance of the
message you are delivering.
• Use bold or emphasize text to highlight ideas or concept.
Guideline of choosing fonts
• In large headlines, adjust the spacing between letters
(kerning) so that the spacing feels right.
• Use anti-aliasing for big fonts but turn off anti-aliasing for
small fonts.
• Surround headlines with white space
• Distinguish text links with colors and underlining
• Use drop caps and initial caps
Efficient use of text
• Positive ways to communicate message by less text and
other ways are
1. Hypertext
2. Pop-up Messages
3. Drop-down Boxes
4. Scroll Bars
5. Buttons for interaction
6. Symbols & Icons
Hypertext
• Linking a hypertext or hot word / hotspot to another part
of the title that displays more text
• Very effectively used to retrieve info from databases
• Helps user in decision making
• User can process information faster and strategically
Pop-up messages
• Another type of Hot word used to save space
• Click on a hot word or a text, a small message pops up
explaining in brief about the hot word
• Remains for some time and vanishes after programmed
duration or by a mouse click
Drop-down boxes
• Gives the user a set of choices and reduces his strain of
decision making
• That is making choice in a easier way and limited according
to the system’s capabilities
• Choosing may lead to another page with text or may retrieve
info from database
Scroll Bars
• Usually not a good practice to use scroll bars
• Mostly irritates the user
• Important messages should not be posted using scrollbars,
since the user may not notice it
Buttons
• The concept of hyper linking remains the same
• Change in appearance by using a button with text to glow
on it rather than using a hyper text
Symbols & Icons
• Using symbols or icons in-order to express a meaning
• Eg: A floppy icon in MS Word represents “Save”,
expressing to save the document
