CHAPTER 2

TEXT
 Introducti
•
on
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 medi

other types, but it often conveys essential and precise a
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 –
• Number
z
s
–0–9
• Special
characters
- Punctuation (. , ; “ ‘ ! :
- - /) Signs ($ + - = @ # %
^ & *)
 Fonts &
• Typeface Faces
– Graphic representation or the shape of characters.

 A typeface is a family of related fonts

– Example : Bookman Old Style

• Font
– Collection of characters of different sizes and styles of
a typeface.
– Example : Arial 18 point Bold
 Fonts &
• Faces
Font Styles
– Bold, Italic and Underline

• Font Size
– Expressed in point
– Example : 18 point
(x)
 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.

– Regular, Condensed and Expanded – the body

width of the font.

– Cases : upper and lower. BALL vs ball

– Case Sensitive : exactly matched

 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
336
 Serif
Tracking
Ascender

BD hp
Descender

Av
Ke r

Leading
ning
Tracking and
Kerning

Av
Unkerned
A
 Font
Terminology

Condensed and Expanded

 Font
 Bold, Italic,Styles
Underline, Strikethrough, supesrp
or subscprit,
cirt

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)
Refer to microsoft word.
 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.
CAN YOU READ THIS? IF NOT IT IS BECAUSE EVERYTHING IS
WRITTEN IN CAPITAL LETTERS. THEREFORE THIS SHOULD ALWAYS
BE AVOIDED.

Can you read this? It is easier because people will recognize shape of
characters easier this way.

Can you read this? It is easier because people will recognize shape of characters
easier this way.
 Meaningful
• Text words
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
• Forfonts
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
• textways to communicate message
Positive
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
 Types of
Text
Hypertext

• It enables the integrated set of

documents (each comprising formatted
text) to be created which have defined
linkages between them.
Hyperte
xt
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
 Hyperte
•
xt
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
 Drop-down
• Gives theboxes
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
 Button
s
• 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 and
Icons
symbols

• Concentrated text in the form of stand

alone graphic constructs.
• Convey meaningful messages.
• Need to be learn and advice to use
a standard symbols.
Example of Symbols and
Icons
 Computer and 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.
 …
Extended Character Set (ISO Extended
Latin- 1) continued Characters

– Extra 1 bit in ASCII is filled with ANSI ¢  ä

(American National Standards ü
Institution) characters (256 characters)

Unicode
– Unicode is the universal standard for
multi language characters published by
Unicode Consortium. Unicode
Characters
– Unicode 4.0 standard covers 96,382
characters using 16 bits uniform
encoding.
‫ﺥﺡﺝﺚﺙﺏﺍ‬
– Unicode can support a wide variety of non-
Roman alphabets including Han Chinese, αβγδεζ
Japanese, Arabic, Korean, Bengali, and so
on.