5.4 Multimedia Text
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The Problem of “Installed Fonts”
The coding schemes used for text, such as ASCII or Unicode, are so widely supported that
multimedia developers seldom need to be concerned about their availability to users.
This is not true of fonts. Particular fonts (Palatino, Times, Chicago, etc.) must be
installed in the user’s operating system for text to be displayed as the developer
intended. If the specific font is not available, the computer operating system will gener-
ally substitute another. The results may not be pretty. Text alignment may be lost and the
psychology of the text display, its mood or feel, may be altered.
Developers employ two basic strategies to deal with the challenge of installed fonts.
The first ...