[Date Prev][Date Next] [Chronological] [Thread] [Top]

RE: reverse text option

In order to eliminate the possibility of voters voting by circling the names of candidates or placing marks next to the names of candidates (outside of voting ovals), Dynabec (Quebec) has decided to print candidate names in reverse text, white on black.  The race box is then black, excluding the race header and the column containing ovals, which is pumpkin coloured except for voting ovals, column boundaries with the black race area extending 1/8" outside of oval boundaries.
 
Halloween theme ballots.  Incredible.
Dynabec would like GEMS to provide a reverse text printing option with an option to specify how close black colour approaches the column containing voting ovals (say with a minimum of 1/8").  The black colour would not be printed in the race header. 
 
We have had a request for reverse text before from Tari.  Unfortunately this is not possible with our text control.  Here was the response from 7/30/98.
 
Ken
 

> We will need the ability to do white text on black background for the
> upcoming General in AZ-  this is needed by Sept 10.
> Tari

The only way to do this for the forseeable future is to insert windows
metafiles (.wmf) or enhanced metafiles (.emf) created with CorelDraw.  Rob
and Nel have done this in the past.  You can ask them how they did it.

This request always seems to be for special text (PROPOSITION or similar).
You create an image with CorelDraw or PageMaker, and save it as a windows
metafile.  Then use "insert object" in the GEMS editor to bring it into the
race or header.  Don't save the CorelDraw file as a bitmap, even though it
can import, because they are very large and don't scale.  That is, they have
jaggies when printed at high resolution.


I am not sure what to do with this RCR.  I have brought the issue up with
Larry in the past.  Our text capabilities are limited by what Microsoft
gives us in its editor.  The editor is not extensible.  We have the same
problem in not being able to do fully justified text.  We would basically
have to write one from scratch, which is akin to re-writing Microsoft Word.
Understandably, this is a very big project.  It would probably take a
competent programmer a year just to get something that works as well as what
we have.  From a realistic standpoint, I am not sure that this company would
launch such an ambitious project.  Our best hope is to find some third party
editor that we could use and modify, but we have not yet found one.

As a general statement, we have to do everything in our power to discourage
the use of oddball drawing requirements.

I will put the RCR on the "open" list to remind us of the issue.

Ken