1.16 color features, take 1.5

["Ken Clark" <ken@gesn.com>]

Color is a big topic.  Here is a first take with the basics.

 

There is a new color tab in the ballot options dialog.  The ballot options dialog allows you to choose underlying background for the touch screen page, headers, races, and candidates:

 

 

 

Clicking on one of the four boxes pops up a color selection dialog:

 

 

 

Note the "Transparent" checkbox.  If the color is currently transparent, you need to uncheck that box before selecting the color.  I agree that is a bit awkward.  I would have preferred that when you click a basic color, the transparent checkbox automatically unchecks.  Perhaps in a future release, but this is unfortunately (and counter intuitively) not straightforward to do.

 

The background colors form a hierarchy.  For the touch screen, the page color is the bottom of the hierarchy.  For paper, it is the color of the paper stock.

 

Above the page color is the race and header color selected in the ballot options dialog.  If transparent is chosen for the race/header color, then the page color shows through.  The race color covers the whole race box, including the candidate area.  The candidate color is in turn above the race.  If the candidate color is not transparent it will be drawn in the candidate area, otherwise the race color will show through.

 

The colors selected in the ballot options dialog can be overridden on a race/header basis.  Here is the new race editor draw options:

 

 

 

Headers are similar.  If a color is selected in the race editor, then that color will overwrite those in the ballot options.  If the race editor color is transparent, the color in the ballot options shows though.  In the example above, the diagonal lines indicate that the candidate background color is transparent.

 

The shaded checkbox for races and headers still exists, but you can use color to pick whatever shade of gray you prefer.

 

Finally, each of the rich text editors now have two new buttons in the tool bar: 

 

 

The underlined "A" button changes the font color of the text selection.  Simple enough. 

 

The square blue box changes the background color of the area in which the text is drawn.  That is, it excludes margins.   This is not a particularly useful feature, and was almost removed.  Its not hurting anyone either though, and might one day be useful.  I suggest leaving the text background color alone in favor of the draw options.

 

For illustration, here is a red race with yellow candidates:

 

 

 

 

As a final note, all the color information will be also downloaded to the AVTS for display on the touch screen.  The AVTS release will be in a couple of weeks, and will also include some of the other pending AVTS RCRs as well.

 

Ken