Ink conservation and reduction of use strategic font (ICARUS font)

FIRST ROUGH DRAFT

GRADE 12 INVESTIGATORY PROJECT

In accomplishment of the subject: Research II

Comments:
Rephrase and make the narratives clearer
Wrong statistical analysis
Wrong citation format
Remove unnecessary parts

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 ABSTRACT

This study determined the effectiveness of the Project I.C.A.R.U.S in reducing the

ink use in printing of text at Salapungan National High School computer laboratory.

Specifically, the study sought answer to the following questions: 1) To develop an

ink reduction font. 2) To validate the ink reduction font in terms of: a. Structure b. Cost

c. Functionality. 3To determine the effectiveness of the ink reduction font according to

the user.

This study was guided by the hypothesis that 1) The text printed using ICARUS

method will have huge significant difference with the same text printed using

conventional method and 2) Ink conservation strategy is not an effective way of reducing

ink consumption.

Finding showed that the output result of the experiment is a success. It

successfully produced a true type of font file of the glyphs and be installed in almost

every word processing computers.

From the result of the finding, the conclusion we’re drawn 1) Analyzing the

output values, f value is higher than f critical. This means that there is no significant

differences between the two column, supporting the the basis for rejecting the first null

hypothesis. Based on the result analysis that using the new strategy of printing text saves

up to 21.674 % of ink. The font can print 121 pages versus 100 pages of the conventional

method which is the 21% increase with the same amount of ink.

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Rationale

Printed texts are indispensable resources in many important aspects of a man’s life

like entertainment, businesses, religion, information, and education. Ever since the ancient

Egyptians invented the papyrus, through the Chinese perfection of paper manufacturing

and ever more increasing with Gutenberg’s invention of the printing press, printing has

been the main means of storing information.

Even in the rise of modernization and even digital computers, this fact did not

change but instead, the demand for it even increased. According to a white paper released

by Preton Ltd., Global printed products consumption has tripled over the past three decades

and have grown by half again in 2010. As the information flow grows faster and more

wide-spread, the human society's tendency to print did not even diminish. In Europe, paper

consumption has increased an average of 2.5% per year in the past decade and has been in

constant growth, declining only in 2008 following the economic downturn. World demand

is expected to grow by 2.1% per year until 2022.

According to the data of United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural

Organization, 2.2 million unique books are published worldwide, not counting how many

copies each unique book may have been reproduced.

A standard 12ml ink cartridge can print 300 one-sided prints. On average, a book

has 300 two-sided pages. In that case, it would take 26,400,000 milliliters of ink, enough

to fill a pool, just to print a single copy of each of those unique books. A book can have as

much as millions of copies depending on its popularity.

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 A huge number of the books are printed for school use. Most schools also require

printed project for its students. In a recent local survey, about 60% of a computer shop’s

print jobs are from students.

What most don’t know is that the tendency to print bares a heavy environmental

cost. In addition to the obvious environmental footprint caused by paper consumption, the

increased ink usage also has an environmental price.

In example, it takes a gallon of fossil oil to produce one laser cartridge, and 2-1/2

ounces of oil to manufacture each new inkjet cartridge. In addition, the energy used to

manufacture 350 million cartridges is enough to make tens of thousands of SUVs.

Ingredients in toner cartridges are toxic and contain some amount of volatile organic

compounds (VOCs) in the form of solvents. Green House Gasses (GHGs) from

manufacturing a single mono toner cartridge have been calculated to approximately 4.8 Kg

CO2. Using a remanufactured cartridge still emits an estimated 2.4 Kg CO2.

Although not often brought to attention, office printers have a major influence on

indoor air quality. Studies show a clear rise in the concentration of ozone, VOCs and

ultrafine particles (UFPs) during operation of printers as compared to idle mode. This is

prominent especially in laser printers although ink-jet printers show an increase in

contaminant levels as well. Laser printer toners are filled with a fine powder-like substance

more tending to disperse. These compounds and particles have both short and longterm

impacts on human health, ranging from simple discomfort, fatigue and irritation to higher

mortality rates due to respiratory and cardiovascular diseases.

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 The average toner cartridge is composed of 40 percent plastic, 40 percent metal and

smaller amounts of rubber, paper, foam and toner. Each year over 350 million cartridges

are thrown out. Approximately thirteen cartridges are discarded every second, in the U.S.

alone. In 2007, there were 375 million laser cartridges and a whopping 1.5 billion ink

cartridges dumped — and those numbers are expected to grow to 500 million and 1.8

billion respectively in 2012.

The worst is considering that each cartridge becomes 3.5 pounds of solid waste

sitting in a landfill and can take up to 450 to 1000 years to decompose, as it includes mixed

resin, one of the most difficult plastics to recycle. Every 100 toner cartridges dumped,

according to a study of Laser-Tek Services, has a potential discharge of roughly 1 cubic

meter of CO2 into the atmosphere.

If not recycled, the only way to get rid of this garbage is to burn it. Burning

cartridges emits dioxins and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), both cancerous

pollutants that pollute local rivers and lands, make their way into the food chain and affect

all levels of species.

To solve this, recent decades have introduced technologies promising to replace our

need for these physical, costly and waste inducing products. "Paperless" was a commonly

used term introduced back in the 1970's where it is suggested that screens, projector, and

monitors should be used instead of printed materials. Unfortunately, this never took off.

While screens and projectors are sure ways to eliminate printing, it is quite problematic.

For example, monitors and other types of digital devices need constant power in order to

display information. A study from Miramar Eye Specialist Medical Group also found many

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potential dangers to eyes that involves conditions ranging from simple dizziness to early

cataracts because of long term use of bright screens.

Aside from this, printed papers are thinner and more convenient and accessible

instead of a digital document. It is also easily interacted with. It will not be a choice to

completely remove printing anytime soon, even if it leaves considerable amounts of

dangerous gasses, and potential sickness-inducing chemicals. The choice left is to find a

middle ground on where the consumption is reduced while enjoying the convenience of

printing.

Project I.C.A.R.U.S will be helping to achieve this goal by creating fonts with holes

that while reducing ink consumption by up to 20%, it does not compromise the printing

quality of the text document if viewed under normal document range (16 inches away or

greater). That means if 100 copies of a text document is printed, by using this strategy, it

can print 20 documents more.

General Purpose

The aim of this study is to lessen the ink consumption and risks because of ink’s

toxic components and thus reducing environmental footprint, by the use of Project

I.C.A.R.U.S.

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Statement of the Problem

The ultimate aim of this study is to test the effectiveness of Project I.C.A.R.U.S in

reducing the ink use of printing texts. It also seeks to answer the following questions:

1) To develop an ink reduction font.

2) To validate the ink reduction font in terms of:

a. Structure

b. Cost

c. Functionality.

3. To determine the effectiveness of the ink reduction font according to the user.

Hypothesis

This study will be guided by the following hypothesis:

𝐻0 : ICARUS Font is not an effective way of reducing ink consumption.

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Significance of the Study

The study aims to help reduce the use of ink that is very costly to produce and has

detrimental effect on the environment during its production from the factories. The

cartridge that contains it also contribute to the waste that this study will try to lessen.

It will also serve an important effect to the…

Students. The study will help the students save money in printing because printing

can be cheaper.

Parents. The study will help parents with regards to their financial specifically in

the printing needs of their children in school.

School. This can be beneficial to all the schools in terms of their paper works and

producing test papers for examinations of students.

Teacher. This technique can be used in printing modules. This will greatly help

them because they can print more for less ink.

Future researchers. This study will encourage future researchers to perform their

own study on how to reduce the use of ink.

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Scope and Limitation of the Study

This study will focus on the effectivity of using the I.C.A.R.U.S technique in ink

conservation. This study will only be testing the efficiency of new strategy theoretically

and how much ink can be saved with an inkjet printer.

Type of Research

This study will use developmental method of research. Using this method, the

developmental project will be compared with the conventional or existing projects. Then,

the researchers will try to measure the similarities and dissimilarities of each other using

instruments.

Respondents and Sampling Method

Students are the respondents of Salapungan National High School. Twenty students

are randomly chosen. The researcher used the fish bowl method on gathering the

respondents for the study.

Instrument

Questionnaires were used to gather data among the respondents. The researchers

prepared questionnaire for gathering the data needed. The questionnaire was a survey type.

The researchers also used histogram tools and pixel counters to measure how much

black and white spots there is in an image.

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Location of the Study

The development and testing will be done in Salapungan National High School

Computer Laboratory.

Definition of Terms

Open-source is a term that ascribes that a certain software can be modified by

public and its source codes are publicly published. Some software has source code

that only the person, team, or organization who created it—and maintains exclusive

control over it—can modify. People call this kind of software "proprietary" or

"closed source" software.

Only the original authors of proprietary software can legally copy, inspect, and alter

that software. And in order to use proprietary software, computer users must agree

(usually by signing a license displayed the first time they run this software) that

they will not do anything with the software that the software's authors have not

expressly permitted. Microsoft Office and Adobe Photoshop are examples of

proprietary software.

Open source software is different. Its authors make its source code available to

others who would like to view that code, copy it, learn from it, alter it, or share it.

LibreOffice and the GNU Image Manipulation Program are examples of open

source software.

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As they do with proprietary software, users must accept the terms of a license when

they use open source software—but the legal terms of open source licenses differ

dramatically from those of proprietary licenses.

Open source licenses affect the way people can use, study, modify, and distribute

software. In general, open source licenses grant computer users permission to use

open source software for any purpose they wish. Some open source licenses—what

some people call "copyleft" licenses—stipulate that anyone who releases a

modified open source program must also release the source code for that program

alongside it. Moreover, some open source licenses stipulate that anyone who alters

and shares a program with others must also share that program's source code

without charging a licensing fee for it.

By design, open source software licenses promote collaboration and sharing

because they permit other people to make modifications to source code and

incorporate those changes into their own projects. They encourage computer

programmers to access, view, and modify open source software whenever they like,

as long as they let others do the same when they share their work.

Open-sourcing is not limited to programs and operating systems. It can be applied

to any piece of computer software as long as there is a source and there can be

something to modify.

Glyph in typography is an elemental symbol within an agreed set of symbols,

intended to represent a readable character for the purposes of writing. Glyphs are

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considered to be unique marks that collectively add up to the spelling of a word or

contribute to a specific meaning of what is written, with that meaning dependent on

cultural and social usage.

The term has been used in English since 1727, borrowed from glyphe (in use by

French antiquaries since 1701), from the Greek γλυφή, glyphē, "carving," and the

verb γλύφειν, glýphein, "to hollow out, engrave, carve" (cognate with Latin glubere

"to peel" and English cleave).

Font is defined as the design for a set of characters. A font is the combination of

typeface and other qualities, such as size, pitch, and spacing. For example, Times

Roman is a typeface that defines the shape of each character.

Side-bearing in typography means the horizontal spaces either side of an individual

character or glyph. The spaces either side are referred to as Left Side Bearing (LSB)

and Right Side Bearing (RSB). These spaces ensure that characters sit beside one

another with an even appearance.

Kerning is the process of adjusting the spacing between characters in a

proportional font, usually to achieve a visually pleasing result. Kerning adjusts the

space between individual letter forms, different from sidebearings which adjusts

the whitespaces inside a particular glyph.

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Chapter III: Methodology

This project will use the following softwares: Adobe Photoshop, Fontlab Studio 5.

The required softwares are installed on a computer and the work was started

The researchers chose a base font. As popular fonts like Verdena, Arial, and Times

New Roman cannot be used without license from Microsoft, the researchers chose the font

FreeSans as the base. It is a freeware under the GPL license, and its source code which

includes its graphical appearance can be used, bundled, modified and redistributed for

personal or non-profit causes (SIL Open Font Licence).

The dot background is first made. Dots are chosen because printers, unlike digital

displays like LCD which uses square pixels, print graphics by using tiny droplets of ink.

This is why an LCD display’s resolution is measured by pixels per inch (PPI) while a

printer’s resolution is measured by dots per inch (DPI).

The dot backdrop is designed to significantly reduce ink consumption while

retaining the structure of a letter when it has been overlaid. This is done by using two layers

of alternating circles of varying sizes and slightly slanted every layer so that while spaces

may at least be unnoticeable if not filled by printing. After doing this, a test glyph is printed.

It was observed that the dots can further be optimized to save more ink. The final backdrop

is the graphic below which has been inverted for demonstration purposes.

Graphic A: The first design of dots

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 Graphic B: The final layout of the
dots

The glyphs are then made. Using Adobe Photoshop, a single letter of FreeSans font

is inputted and the dot backdrop is overlaid above it. Using blending options, a 3px. outline

is added to preserve the letter’s edges. The excess dots are then removed using magic wand

tool. The black parts are selected and then the inverse is selected to select the outside parts.

The backdrop layer is selected and the selected parts are deleted. The visible layers are

merged and then saved as a bitmap with interlacing, and not JPEG as it is notorious for

edge artifacts due to compression.

These individual letter bitmaps are then one by one converted to linear/curved lines

using the tools native to Studio 5. The bitmaps are first imported as backgrounds and then

the blacks are traced. Then, the traced points are connected using the convert tool. This

forms a glyph for a font.

Capital letters are completed. The small letters are a lot harder to make because

some letters like “g”, ”y”, ”q” should be put below the baseline. While letters like “a”, ”o”,

and “e” should be reduced in size. The final output of small letters resulted to the graphic

below:

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 Graphic C: The first output of the fonts converted to curved lines

Another problem arose when type testing the font. Kerning ang metrics are other

important things to be considered. It was discovered that because of the positioning of the

inconsistent positioning of the letters, the white spaces between them varied. Some

spaces got as far as 300 units. The early tests as TTF resulted to the following:

Graphic D: Showing the early test of the font as TTF

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 The letters are carefully adjusted one by one. Using metrics windows, left and

right side-bearing values are inputted and are adjusted to optimum. After the final

adjustments, the glyph set looked like the graphic below:

Graphic D: The final letter kerning and metrics adjustment of the font set

The font is saved as a true type font. (*.ttf). The font is exported and a test text is

printed using the font. The researchers decided that the font is configured enough for

testing.

The form of testing conducted is a blind test. The experimental font is labeled as

“Set A”. The second font is FreeSans labeled “Set B”.

Questionnaires are distributed to 20 respondents. A questionnaire is also prepared

to be answered by a professional in the field.

The last test would be the histogram. A letter, for example, the small letter “c” is

tested. The transparent layers are first selected and then the selected layers are inversed.

The pixel count of all selected areas of the image can be seen in histogram

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Chapter IV: Results and Discussions

The output result of the development is a success. It successfully produced a True

Type Font file of the glyphs and can be installed in almost every word processing

computers.

Using the questionnaires, it has been proven that the print outputs of the ICARUS

Font, have no negative visual distinctions from Arial Font. The score of Arial Font in

question 5 has an average of 3.9 among 20 respondents, while the score of ICARUS Font

garnered an average of 3.6 which is just 0.3 difference. If rounded off, these values will

still be the same. This proves that the overall visual characteristics of both fonts are

indistinguishable 16 inches away. There is no huge visual distinction between the two

fonts. The first null hypothesis is therefore rejected.

The questions are then put to analysis of variance. The raw scores from the

respondents are counted and then averaged per question. The final averages can be seen on

the table below:

SET A SET B
3.55 3.75
3.7 3.85
3.3 3.8
3.5 3.8
3.6 3.9

These values are then statistically analyzed. The researchers used ANOVA

or analysis of variance to test if there is a significant difference between the two set

of values. This resulted to the table below:

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 ANOVA
Source of
Variation SS df MS F P-value F crit
Between
Groups 0.21025 1 0.21025 16.65347 0.00353 5.317655
Within Groups 0.101 8 0.012625

Total 0.31125 9

WRONG STATISTICAL ANALYSIS

Analyzing the output values, F value is higher than F critical. This means that there

is no significant difference between the values between the two columns, supporting the

basis for rejecting the first null hypothesis.

Using histogram, the theoretical savings is calculated. When the number of pixels

of the whole glyph is counted, the value is 73915. Next, all blacks are highlighted aside

from the dots. And the same process is done. The value is 57895 which is 78.326% of the

original number. Therefore, there is 21.674% savings theoretically in this particular glyph.

ICARUS Font is an effective way of reducing ink consumption. The first null hypothesis

is rejected. This can further be seen on the graphic below:

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 To sum up, it can be statistically proven that there are no visual distinctions between

ICARUS and Arial. And the ink savings surpassed the values expected.

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Chapter V: Recommendation

A more extensive test is recommended for future researchers. It is recommended to

use special printers that can possibly measure how much ink is actually saved and it is

recommended to try it in colored ink. This will be a big support.

The font file is released online in the website called FontSpace

(http://www.fontspace.com/group-ii/icarus-font) with SIL OpenFont license and can be

modified by anyone. The kerning and spacings are recommended to be readjusted for better

fit and create custom sidebearings in certain letter combinations like “W” and “A”. The

numerical characters, punctuations, and other ACII characters are also recommended to be

added.

The font is recommended to be used in casual text printing like projects, hand-outs,

and modules.

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Wrong citation format

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