RE: Ballot layout

[Jeff Hintz <jhglobal@earthlink.net>]

I was going to put in a RCR myself today, on a similar subject matter.  I 
believe that I have put into one of the RCR's a similar request that is 
needed for Puerto Rico, but I will specify in further detail here.

Puerto Rico uses Picture bitmaps of the candidates, and require that the 
oval be centered below each of these bitmaps.  Furthermore, their ballots 
differ for each election.  Sometimes they will have a 3 column ballot, 
other times a 4 column ballot, and still other times a 5 column ballot. 
 Having the ability to specify exactly where the oval should be for each 
candidate within each race would extremely help this problem for Puerto 
Rico.  I am currently laying out their November ballot, which is 5 columns. 
 Having to lay out the ovals by themselves, then dropping in the Picture 
bitmap, tends to become a little time consuming; and I am only laying out 1 
style.  For this November election, I am guessing that there will be around 
120 styles or more.  Would the Puerto Rico contract of over 10 million 
dollars be sufficient reason to develop Gems to do this???  One final note, 
the MIS department from the Puerto Rico elections office, would like to see 
just how easy it is to lay out a ballot from Puerto Rico, before they give 
their consent to purchasing election equipment from Global.

-----Original Message-----
From:	Ken Clark [SMTP:ken@gesn.com]
Sent:	Tuesday, April 04, 2000 11:00 AM
To:	support@gesn.com
Subject:	RE: Ballot layout

  From: Greg Forsythe [mailto:gfglobal@earthlink.net]

  GEMS-1-15-9

  Assuming a three race ballot
  Option to layout races in rows.  Specify the race width 10 blocks, one
block separating the middle race on either side.

  Rational;  99% of Canadian election races are Mayor, Councillor and 
School
Trustee.  Currently, these races are 10 blocks wide and in column.  If a
second column is created it becomes 11 blocks wide.  Every ballot has to be
manually relocated in a row, reduced (when necessary) to 10 blocks with a
blank space on either side of the centre race.

  I would have sent this to RCR, but perhaps the facility is already there.


  Appreciate your comments.

  Greg Forsythe

No, its not already there.  Your proposal, though, introduces a fixed
quarter-inch unit width to races.  GEMS doesn't fix the size of its drawing
elements -- elements flow like paragraphs in a document.

What you are looking for is the ability to customize the columns.  Instead
of just specifying how many columns a ballot has, you would specify the
start and extent of each column.  The internal data structure for this has
actually been in place to do this since GEMS 0.1, but has never been used.
I even think this is a VTS feature.  It has been on the TODO list for too
long to remember.

The problem is that a decent user interface would involve a cool looking
ruler with stipples that you could drag around to adjust the columns.  That
would be a custom control involving a lot of work.  It has never been 
deemed
worth it.  Put in your words, 99% of Canadian elections have three race or
less ballots, which means they should take less than half an hour to lay 
out
by hand.  There is also no statutory reason not to lay out these three race
ballots one race atop another, or beside without the quarter inch gap.  In
short, I doubt those accounts could justify the cost of development of the
feature.  Larger accounts that could justify it have bigger problems than
tweaking individual columns by a quarter inch.  I would certainly enjoy
finding an account willing to fund this though.  I have wanted this feature
since I designed the column structures.

As a final note, you can approximate the effect you are looking for by 
using
the "box margins" ballot option.  That means however you have to eat 
another
quarter inch channel, and get 10, 10, 9 channel columns.  The box margin
feature however appears broken now that I try it, since 1.15.1 I suspect.
I'll look into that if you want.  As you can see, this stuff just isn't
used.

Ken

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