CHAPTER 04: TEXT TECHNOLOGY

1. CHAPTER 04: TEXT TECHNOLOGY • Introduction to Text • History of Text • Text Design • Text Processing • ASCII Character Set Last updated: 5/07/06

2. Introduction to Text • Typeface: A family of graphic characters that usually includes many type sizes and style. • Font: A collection of characters of a single size and style belonging to a particular typeface family. • Text can be defined as an element of information media that used various typefaces to display a sequences of characters that helping people to understand and receive some important information. • Text is a vital element of multimedia menus, navigation systems, and content.

3. History of Text • Using text and symbols for communication is a human development that began about 6000 years ago in Mesopotamia, Egypt and Babylonia when the first meaningful marks were scraped onto mud tablets and left to harden in the sun. • Today, the ability to read and write is expected as text delivers information that can have potent meaning.

4. Text Design Characters of Text • Size • Determined by measuring from the top of a capital letter to the bottom -> normally 0.138 inches. • Are usually expressed in points • The relationship between readability and point size differs somewhat among typefaces.

5. Text Design • Font colour • Dark colour text on light background. • Light colour text on dark background. • Printed material, is most readable in black and white. • It is better to use colour combinations only for larger or highlighted text, such as headlines and titles.

6. Text Design 3. Style • Effects that are useful for bringing the viewer's attention (e.g: bold, italic, underlined, etc). 4. Cases • A roman typeface, using upper and lower cases, is more readable than italics, oblique or condensed. • A capital letter (ABC) is called uppercase while a lower letter is called lower case (abc). • Placing an uppercase letter in the middle of a word is referred to as intercap.

7. Text Design 5. Leading • Distance between two lines of words (line spacing). • Leading, or spacing between lines of text, should be at least 25 to 30 percent of the point size. • Text with close letter spacing often presents difficulties for readers.

8. Text Design 6. Kerning • Distance between two characters. • Adjusting the space between characters is also called tracking. • Example :

9. Text Design 7. Serif versus Sans Serif • Serif is the little decoration at the end of a letter stroke. Serif fonts are used for body text. It is also considered to be more readable on printed pages. • San serif means without the little decoration. Used for headlines and bold statements.

10. Text Design Serif Examples:Sans Serif Examples: Times New Roman Arial Courier New Microsoft Sans Serif Garamond Verdana A Z A Z

11. Text Design Things to consider when designing text • Strike a balance on the text content on your work. Too little text on a screen requires many annoying page turns and unnecessary mouse clicks and waits. Too much text can make screen look overcrowded and unpleasant. • The number of characters per line and the number of lines of text per page should be limited. • Check spelling and grammar. Typos cannot only be annoying; they may keep links from working properly.

12. Text Design • For small type, use the most legible font available. • Use decorative fonts accordingly. • Use as few different faces as possible in your work. • Vary the size of a font in proportion to the importance of the message you are delivering. • Use light colored font on dark background and vice versa.

13. Text Design • Do not use too much animated text. • Do not mix font colors. • Do not confuse users between text and hyperlink by underlining unnecessarily. • When working on a different computer than the one you are expected to present later, use only familiar fonts or else the fonts will come out differently.

14. Text Design Using Text Elements in a Multimedia Presentation • Anti-aliased text must be used when a gentle and blended look for titles and headlines is needed. • Ideas and concepts can be highlighted by making the text bold or by emphasizing text. • A pleasant look can be created by experimenting with different font faces, sizes, leadings, and kerning.

15. Text Design • The text elements used in multimedia are: • Menus for navigation. • Interactive buttons. • Fields for reading. • HTML documents. • Symbols and icons.

16. Text Design 1. Menus for Navigation • A user navigates through content using a menu. • A simple menu consists of a text list of topics. • Use navigation menu to show: • where the user can go • where the user currently is 2. Interactive Buttons • A button is a clickable object that executes a command when activated. • Users can create their own buttons from bitmaps and graphics.

17. Text Design 3. Fields for Reading • Reading a hard copy is easier and faster than reading from the computer screen. • A document can be printed in one of two orientations; portrait or landscape. • The taller-than-wide orientation used for printing documents is called portrait. • The wider-than-tall orientation that is normal to monitors is called landscape.

18. Text Design 4. HTML Documents • HTML stands for Hypertext Markup Language. • It is the standard document format used for Web pages. • HTML documents are marked using tags. • An advanced form of HTML is DHTML( Dynamic Hypertext Markup Language). • DHTML uses Cascading Style Sheets (CSS). • CSS provides more layout and control although implementations is sporadic. • Some of the commonly used tags are: • The <B> tag for making text bold faced. • The <OL> tag for creating an ordered list. • The <IMG> tag for inserting images.

19. Text Design 5. Symbols and Icons • Symbols are concentrated text in the form of stand-alone graphic constructs. • They are used to convey meaningful messages. • Symbols used to convey human emotions are called emoticons. • Icons are symbolic representations of objects and processes.

20. Text Design Font Editing and Design Tools 1. Macromedia Fontographer • Fontographer is a specialized graphics editor. • It is compatible with both Macintosh and Windows platform. • It can be used to develop PostScript, TrueType, and bitmapped fonts. • It can also modify existing typefaces and incorporate PostScript artwork (Postscript is a method of describing an image in terms of mathematical constructs).

21. Text Design Font Editing and Design Tools 2. Creating attractive text • Applications that are used to enhance texts and images include: • Adobe Photoshop • TypeStyler • COOL 3D • HotTEXT • TypeCaster

22. Text Processing • Electronic text documents are made up of sequences of characters that are arranged and formatted in particular ways. • Both the characters and their formats must be digitized before the computer can process them. • Written languages are represented by a set of symbols called character set. • A character set contain the letter from the alphabet, punctuation marks, number and other special symbols.

23. The ASCII Character Set • ASCII stands for American Standard Code for Information Interchange. • Computers can only understand numbers, so an ASCII code is the numerical representation of a character such as 'a' or '@' or an action of some sort. • ASCII was developed a long time ago and now the non-printing characters are rarely used for their original purpose. • ASCII was actually designed for use with teletypes and so the descriptions are somewhat obscure.

24. The ASCII Character Set • If someone says they want your CV however in ASCII format, all this means is they want 'plain' text with no formatting such as tabs, bold or underscoring - the raw format that any computer can understand. • This is usually so they can easily import the file into their own applications without issues. • Notepad.exe creates ASCII text, or in MS Word you can save a file as 'text only‘. • The ASCII character table which includes descriptions of the first 32 non-printing characters is shown in the next slide.

25. The ASCII Character Set

26. The ASCII Character Set Mapping across platforms • Fonts and characters are not cross-platform compatible. • They must be mapped to the other machine using font substitution.