Text media

Multimedia:
During the past few years, developments in computer technology have raised interest
in multimedia as a transformational mode of instructional delivery. In contrast to earlier
forms of audio-visual technology, the power of computer-based multimedia results from
1) its ability to combine multiple media formats under a single interface and 2) its ability
to link objects within those formats in a nonlinear fashion. Effective incorporation of
multimedia into the curriculum requires an understanding of the differences between
presentation-mode use of the technology by educators and hands-on use by students. The
ultimate success of multimedia will require improvements in network technology to
facilitate widespread access to source materials.
Multimedia is the combination of text, animated graphics, video and sound present’s
information in a way that is more interesting and easier to grasp than text alone.

Text media:
When a user has a disability, access to learning software may depend entirely on
how flexibly that product can deliver its content. Some users may need only to modify
the parameters in which media is presented; other users may require entirely different
media. Developers who achieve the kind of flexibility that diversity requires will enhance
the accessibility of their product.
At a minimum, developers should provide text representations for all media types. This
baseline will help address access for many users. That said, it should be noted that users
with learning disabilities benefit from graphical presentations. For this reason, the
practice of providing text-only content as an alternative to inaccessible multimedia
content may not be an effective solution for users with cognitive disabilities.
Text and the ability to read it are doorways to power and knowledge. Reading and
writing are expected and necessary skills within most modern culture. Text delivers the
information that has potent meaning.
Words and symbols in any form, spoken or written, are the most common system of
communication. They deliver the most widely understood meaning to the greatest number
of people__accurately and in detail. Because of this, they are vital elements of
multimedia menus, navigation systems, and content.

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When text is correctly structured and formatted, it can be the most flexible way to present
content. To make distributed online learning accessible, developers of learning platforms
must provide a means to render digital text in alternative formats.
Specifically, it should be possible to render text as:

• Visual information. Text can be displayed on computer screens or other

electronic devices (e.g. personal digital assistants, cell phones, e-book readers).
• Audio information. Text can be translated into speech using recordings or via
synthesized speech provided by a computer.
• Tactile information. Text can be displayed on refreshable Braille displays or
printed using a Braille embosser.

Common text accessibility problems include:

• Hard-coded fonts that prevent users from changing style, size, color.
• Text presented with background images or poor contrast colors that hinder
readability.
• Text presented in an image format that screen readers and Braille displays could
not transform.
• Multi-column formats (including some tables) that screen readers cannot process in
the correct order.

Content creators or educators may enhance the accessibility of text for all
users by following these practices:
• Choose text formats that offer the most accessibility (e.g. XHTML, plain text).
• Use true text, and not graphical representations of text.
• Structure the text appropriately, identifying headings and other structural elements.
• Uses a number of resources that address flexible media delivery are currently
available. The W3C's Web Accessibility Initiative provides accessibility guidelines
for W3C technologies such as HTML, XML, SMIL, and CSS & SVG. It also
provides more general guidelines for web content accessibility, authoring tool
accessibility, and user agent accessibility.

W3C Format
With the introduction of Synchronized Multimedia Integration Language (SMIL,
pronounced smile) earlier this year, Web multimedia creators have a new tool set for
building time-based, streaming multimedia presentations that combine audio, video,
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images, and text. The proposed SMIL standard defines an XML-based language that
allows control over the what, where, and when of media elements in a multimedia
presentation with a simple, clear markup language similar to HTML.
In a SMIL presentation, all of the media elements -- images, audio clips, video clips,
animations, and formatted text -- are referenced from the SMIL file, similar to the way an
HTML page references its images, applets, and other elements. A number of advantages
come with such an approach to streaming media. First, the plain-text nature of the SMIL
file means that it is easy to create, easy to edit, and can even be assembled on the fly by
Java servlets or CGI scripts accessing a database. It also allows a very bandwidth-friendly
way to do great looking multimedia. Rather than streaming images and text as many
redundant frames of encoded video, you can stream the image or text data just once, and
display it however, you like.
The first commercial SMIL player to arrive on the scene is Real Networks' latest version
of RealPlayer, called G2. While the previous versions of RealPlayer played only Real
Networks' proprietary audio and video file formats, G2 includes support for many other
media types like WAV, AVI, JPEG, MPEG, and others. Real Networks has implemented
a large subset of the SMIL 1.0 spec in G2, and intends to support the entire spec. G2 also
supports a number of custom XML-based data types that provide additional features for
animating text and images and providing interactivity.
SMIL authoring offers a new way to assemble and deliver streaming multimedia
presentations. Rather than the traditional way of creating a presentation by compiling a
set of media into a single distributable file, SMIL lets authors choreograph separate
media assets quickly and easily, with tools as simple as a text editor. Perhaps the best
feature of SMIL is the ability to generate the code on the fly, as many Web pages are
already created, and thereby offer personalized streaming multimedia. It is even possible
to build a Web-based interface for allowing users to edit or assemble new multimedia
presentations.
For those who'd prefer a GUI authoring environment, several vendors have recently
announced tools for building SMIL, RealPix, and Real Text presentations within a
graphical environment that would look familiar to most multimedia authors.
The ability to stream text offers new capabilities, too, in combining low-bit-rate video
with crystal-clear text. Real Networks offers a live text stream encoder, which could be
used for streaming real-time data of all types, including event information and schedules,
stock prices, general announcements, closed-captioning, subtitles, and more.
SMIL, while it offers many of the capabilities of existing multimedia environments like
QuickTime, is not meant to be a replacement for these technologies. Rather, it is a kind of
universal glue for joining all kinds of different formats and types of media in interesting
and useful ways. Real Networks intends its G2 RealPlayer to be a universal player. Its
architecture allows third-party developers to add renderers for new media types, which is

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how support was added for MPEG1, VRML, and MIDI, for example. Over the coming
months and years, the maturation of both SMIL and the G2 RealPlayer may offer the
most compelling opportunity yet for "convergence" between home entertainment and
computer technologies.

Character sets:
Knowing that there is a wide selection of characters available in computer and
understanding how it can create and use special and custom-made characters will broaden
it creative range when to design and build multimedia projects.

1. ASCII Character Set:

The American standard code for information interchange
(ASCII) is the 7_bit character coding system most commonly used by computer systems
in the United States and abroad. ASCII assign a number or value to 128 characters,
including both uppercase and lowercase letters, punctuation marks, Arabic numbers, and
math symbols. Also included are 32 control characters used for device control messages.

2. Extended Character Set:

A byte, which consists of eight bits, is the most
commonly used building block for computer processing. ASCII uses only bits to code its
128 characters; the eighth bit of byte is unused. This extra bit allows another 128
characters to be encoded before the byte is used up, and computer systems today use
these 128 extra values for extended character set. The extended character set is most
commonly filled with ANSI (American national standards institute).this fuller set of 256
characters is also known as the ISO_Latin_1 character set; it is used when programming
the text of HTML web pages.

3. Unicode:
Unicode focused on 16_bit architecture for multilingual text and
character, it can accommodate up to about 65,000 characters and will ultimately include
the characters from all known languages and alphabets in the world.HTML allows access
to the Unicode characters by numeric reference.

Using text in multimedia

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Interacting with a multimedia information system is quite different from

interacting with a standard text-based information system. In any such system, the real-
world objects, which comprise its domain, are directly represented through their
properties and indirectly represented through their relationships to other real-world
objects. In text-based systems, however, all properties and relationships are presented in a
textual format to the user. In standard relational systems, each real-world object has a
unique textual identifier and has properties whose values can be textually presented. Even
in object-oriented systems, which allow the representation of more complex properties,
such as those, which are set or sequence valued, or those whose values are other objects,
information is presented in a textual format. In a multimedia information system,
however, there exist representations of objects, which are not textually based. These
representations consist of portions of images (static visual representations of objects),
videos (dynamic visual representations of objects), and audios (aural representations of
objects). When these representations are included in the domain of an information
system, they can be used in two distinct fashions: as real-world objects themselves,
having properties and participating in relationships, one can treat them as one treats other
first-class objects and seek to gain information about them; or, as user-recognizable
surrogates for the real-world objects which comprise their content, one can use them in
the process of seeking information about the corresponding non-media objects which
they represent. Knowing the identities of the various non-media objects, which are
represented, by a media object is quite powerful. By seeing or hearing a media object, the
user of a multimedia information system can gain information, through his or her own
knowledge, concerning the represented non-media objects, which may not be explicitly
modeled by the system. Even if all such information is explicitly represented in the
system and is capable of being queried on and textually answered, simply viewing or
hearing the appropriate media object can invoke an emotional reaction not possible via a
simple textual interface. This tutorial will discuss the state-of-the-art in the following
topics: data modeling issues for images, video, and hypermedia, content-based indexing
for images and video, multimedia content indicators for browsing, content-based
browsing, and various prototype image databases, video databases, and hypermedia
systems.

Hyper text markup language (HTML):

With the recent explosion of the internet and World Wide Web, text has become more
important than ever. Indeed, the native language of the web is HTML, originally designed
to display simple text documents on computer screens. In a HTML, document you can
specify typefaces, sizes, colors, and other properties by “making up” the text in the
document with tags.HTML does not provide you with much flexibility make pretty text
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elements , but you may be able to lay out pleasing documents using block quote indents,
tables, frames, and horizontal rules.
Certainly, text is more efficient than imaginary and pictures for delivering a precise
message to users. On the other hand, pictures, icons, moving images, sounds are most
easily recalled and remembered by viewers. With multimedia, you have the power to
blend both text and icons (sound, video, colors, and images) to enhance the overall
impact and value of your messages.

Text and Fonts

Text looks like the easiest medium to create and the least expensive to transmit,
but there’s more to text creation than meets the eye!

First, effective use of text requires good writing, striving for conciseness and accuracy.
• Advertising wordsmiths sell product lines with a logo or tag lines with just a few words
• Similarly, multimedia developers are also presenting text in a media-rich context, weaving words
with sounds, images, and animations
• Design labels for multimedia title screens, menus and buttons using words with the precise and
powerful meanings
• Which feedback is more powerful: “That answer was correct.” or “Terrific!”
o When is “Terrific” more appropriate or effective?
o Why is “quit” more powerful than “close”? Why does UM uses “out” instead?
• Why is the title of a piece especially important?
o It should clearly communicate the content.
o It should get the user interested in exploring the content.
• Let’s discuss some of your proposed project titles.

Some guidelines for writing effective script:

• Write for your audience, bearing in mind your audience’s background and interests
o Can you assume that your audience knows what the traveling saleman problem is?
 Yes, if your audience is CS faculty; no, if it’s CS undergraduates.
o When should you use a casual, idiomatic style or a formal, business-like style?
 Again, it depends on your audience.
• Recommended reading for writers: The Elements of Style, by William Strunk, full of pithy advice
and rules of thumb:
o Say it in active voice:
“Genetic algorithms were invented by John Holland in 1970’s.”
vs. “John Holland invented genetic algorithms in the 1970's.”
o Avoid wordiness: “computer algorithm” vs. just “algorithm”
o Avoid high-falutin’ phrases: “appropriate incorporated” vs. “using”
• Write and rewrite, bearing in mind that users won’t read much on a screen.

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Fonts
Once you’ve chosen your words, you need to decide how to present them, using a typeface and font
See http://www.eecs.lehigh.edu/~glennb/mm/pics/typefont.jpg (from Vaughan)
a typeface is a family of graphic characters that usually includes many type sizes and styles
e.g., Times, Courier and Helvetica are typefaces, each of which include many sizes & styles
a font is a collection of characters of a single size and style, belong to a typeface family
typical font styles are boldface, italic, bold italic, and underlined
font sizes are expressed in terms of points, where one point is .0138 or 1/72 inch,
where size is the distance from the top of capital letters to the bottom of descenders
in lower-case letters such as g and j.
Times is a typeface; Times 12-point italic is a font
In computerese, however, people say “font” when “typeface” would be more accurate.
Leading (pronounced “ledding”) is the space between lines of text
Lopuck recommends increasing the leading to improve readability of text on a screen
Character metrics are the measurements of individual characters
Vector-based fonts permit changes to character metrics for interesting effects;
bit-based fonts do not
Kerning is the spacing between character pairs
Some fonts have variable kerning (e.g., Times), so have fixed kerning (e.g., Courier)
When is fixed kerning more desirable? (Computer code) What about variable kerning?
A serif font has little decorations at the end of each letter stroke
Times and Century Schoolbook are examples of serif fonts; Arial is a sans serif font
On printed pages, serif fonts are traditionally used for body text
because they help guide the reader’s eye along the line of text
Headlines use sans serif text
Computer screens, with 72-dpi (dots per inch), don’t provide as much resolution as print,
so it can be argued sans serif fonts are more legible in small sizes
hence, UM standardized on 12-point Arial font (in Windows)

PostScript vs. TrueType

For the Macintosh, Apple chose a resolution of 72 pixels per inch,
corresponding to standard font resolution for print of 72 points per inch
This allows desktop publishers to have WYSIWYG, approximately
Mac also standardized pixels as square-shaped, so that measurements are even on all sides
On the PC side, VGA imitated these standards
(earlier, EGA had an aspect ratio of 1.33:1, taller than wide)
VGA and Mac standardized no 640 x 480 square-pixel screens,
now the defacto baseline for multimedia production
So far, the good news...

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Apple also spearheaded desktop publishing by adopting Adobe’s PostScript

page description language for printing to Apple’s LaserWriter
Until then, characters were stored in a bitmap table representing every character at every size
PostScript is vector-based, describing each character in terms of mathematical constructs
(Bezier curves), so that each character can be scaled
This facilitates drawing characters at various sizes and in various resolutions
A problem with PostScript is that it represents fonts for printer and screens separately
Adobe Type Manager accesses a font’s outline in the printer font,
and scales it to display to the right size on a screen
Apple apparently didn’t like Adobe’s approach, so they later (circa 1989) introduced TrueType
you only need one file per font, for either printer or screen, nor do you need ATM utility
TrueType also uses a quadratic curves outline font method,
which Apple and others claim produces a smoother characters
Now Truetype is generally available on all Windows and Macintosh systems
Both PostScript and TrueType fonts allow text to be drawn on any size without jaggies
or jagged edges on the outlines of a character, such as in a bold italic style
Anti-alaising exploits color by blending (or dithering) the colors along the edges of letter
Authorware 5 now boast support for anti-aliasing
See http://www.eecs.lehigh.edu/~glennb/mm/pics/MacPCfnt.jpg for comparison
Since PostScript and TrueType are now fairly universal,
it’s fairly safe to use them without worrying about portability,
though not all fonts are identical on each platform
Authorware and Director point out possible problems with mapping fonts
and suggests possible solutions
For example, Arial on Windows apparently maps approximate to Helvitica on Mac
However, these are not exactly equivalent, so porting text is not trivial!
Also, special characters, such as curling quotation marks, rarely map properly.
One way to solve font mapping problems is to convert text into bitmaps
If you want to use other fonts, you either create them yourself,
or obtain from a font manufacturer (sometimes known as a type foundry),
such as Adobe, and Bitstream, Monotype, etc.
These and other interesting fonts are available on the web, e.g., www.bitstream.com

Some more heuristics about choosing text fonts:

For small type, avoid decorative fonts; strive for legibility
Use as few different typefaces in a piece, but vary the style and size where it looks good
Also experiment with different colors and different backgrounds
In blocks of text, use ample leading, i.e., space between lines of text
Avoid scrolling text; test show that users will gloss over all your information!
Keep length of each line short. Lopuck recommend keeping line length under 3".
User’s eyes can get lost finding the next line if the lines are too long.
I try to end each line with a punctuation mark if possible.
Use anti-aliased text for a gentle and blended look for titles and headlines
For attention-grabbing headlines, try graphically altering the text,
using a font editing tool such as ResEdit or Fontographer,
or use drop shadows or three-dimensional effects
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Surround headlines with plenty of white space