----- Original Message -----
Sent: Thursday, August 17, 2000 12:11
PM
Subject: Read headers in VIBS
Posted on behalf
of Phil Scruggs @ Soza:
In the current version of VIBS, the "header" portion of the ballot is
not spoken. Since the audio
information for the header is contained within the database, having this
information spoken should be relatively straightforward.
VIBS currently does not read
play audio for headers, even though there is the ability to record audio with
headers in GEMS. There are several header types in GEMS, race headers,
race footers (not implemented), page headers, page footers.
Race headers are attached to
a group of races, so it would seem natural to play them along with the first
race of the race group. Easy enough.
VIBS does not have the
concept of a "page", so when to play page footer/header audio is less
obvious. When exactly should this audio be played? Once before any
races are played, and never again might be one straightforward solution.
Is that sufficient? Other options?
There is one final
nagging problem that needs to be addressed for VIBS header audio. One of
the most common uses of page headers/footers is to make use of the @precinct
macro to substitute the precinct name into the header. As has been
discussed in the past, we don't store multi-language rich text for the
precinct names -- we just blindly substitute in the precinct label.
Similarly, we don't store any audio for the precinct names either, and besides
the concept of an @precinct macro is rather foreign to recorded audio.
Much the same as the
multi-language issue, I don't see a really clean solution to this.
Recording audio and entering rich text for all the precincts is just too ugly
to consider. Would it be sufficient to punt on the issue and just not
support precinct names in VIBS? Other options?
Ken