b. geilfuss - problem set 3

3.1

sans-serfi to serif
I prefer serifed type when laying down large sections of type, because in those instances, legibility is (to me) the most important factor. I've been told (and I find the argument compelling) that serifed type is more easily read because people read by associating the whole form of a word with the word, and not by parsing each letter individually (when one sees the word apple at a glance, perceiving a rectangle 5 units wide, with a 1/2 unit jut from the buttom where the p's are and 1/2 unit jut from the top where the l is the most immediate input to the read- and not seeing "a", "p", "p", etc.) Serifs enhance this effect by adding more information to the form, via micro-undulations to the outline of it. Even if this were not truly the case for human perception, I find the notion of perceiving words as shapes, of characters as detailing of those shapes, and serifs as detailing of those letter shapes appealing.

3.2

UPPERCASE and lowercase

3.3

blur and noise will work when i return from california. this app does do a good job of rejecting bad float values though :) Currently it makes a call to a blackBox object that decides how to deal with a String, the FontMetrics of that string, the dimensions of the applet, the necessary float value, and a filter choice. It is responsible for word wrap, uppercase/lowercase conversion, and any other filters. because it knows about the size of things, it should be able to do more complex things than my ps1, which really only dealt with single lines well (the word wrap was handled by the main program there)