Multimedia systems include a significant amount of text. Text refers to letters, numbers and other characters separated by white space characters (non-printing characters). Text is the most common form in which information is presented. Often, the images, sound, video and other media within the system are these to reinforce the text based content. Numbers are generally only used when the user performs a function such as navigating through a presentation. Often, when numbers are displayed on the screen, they are presented as text (eg four or three) rather than in numeric form. Text in a multimedia product is written using a word processor.
In multimedia systems both text and numbers are displayed as images using fonts. It is critical to ensure that fonts used within the multimedia presentation will be available to the user on the device the user is viewing the presentation on. If the font used is not available on the end users device, a substitute font will be used which may result in the presentation not being displayed as the creator intended.
In multimedia work, text can be used in a variety of ways including a scrolling box, hypertext, bulleted list, transcribed using voice recognition or captions for movies in multiple languages.