The use of Ecofonts in printing can result in economic savings and lower environmental impact. However, most of the research on the use of Ecofonts focuses on Latin alphabets. Moreover, texts printed with Ecofonts can be perceived as being less legible than those printed with the original typefaces. This study (a) assesses toner use reductions in documents printed with English and Thai Ecofonts, and (b) studies the observers’ perception of texts printed either with Ecofonts or with original typefaces. To achieve this, black pixels were removed from 10 English and 13 Thai typefaces widely used in academia and other media. Visibility and legibility tests, as well as mass analyses tests, were then performed on texts printed with some such typefaces. Results from instrumental measurements and digital image analyses show that the use of Ecofonts reduces toner use of an inkjet printer by up to 28%. The study also proposes a new Ecofont typeface for the Thai language. Visual tests showed that the visual experience of text printed using this Thai Ecofont is satisfactory. Awareness of the benefits of using Ecofonts changes the users’ attitudes towards the printing quality of Ecofont. The removal of black pixels can lead to more sustainable printing, and this simple solution can be extended to other non-Latin languages as part of the global Green Information Technology efforts in South-East Asia.
The utilization of eco-fonts for office printing is a sustainable, “green” printing concept, which has obvious economic benefits. As a result, it has a significant effect on environmental sustainability. This practice's fundamental problem is the decreased quality of text printed using eco-fonts compared to those printed with regular fonts. The aim of this research is eco-font efficiency estimation, i.e. determination of toner usage reduction level of inkjet-printed documents typed with this font type, as well as estimation of the extent humans perceive differences between text printed with eco-font and the one printed by its “non-eco“ equivalent. Combining the instrumental measuring method and digital image analysis, it was found that this simple principle (eco-font utilization) enables substantial toner usage reduction for an inkjet printing system. At the same time, a visual test showed that the visual experience of text printed using eco-font was sufficient. In addition, awareness of the benefits that eco-font utilization brings, change users’ attitude towards eco-font quality. The concept of removing the black pixel from this commonly used Thai font has a great potential for the sustainability printing process, and this simple solution could be applied to other languages as part of the GIT campaign.
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