multiple conditions, multiple teachers and more

[ßingen]

Hi again,

I want to add some more suggestions from my experience with FET.

- Multiple conditions. Maybe it's too difficult, but it would be very powerful to be able to combine constraints with logical operators (with, for example, "NOT" and "OR" would be enough). So it would be possible to implement conditions as: "if a teacher works some day in the afternoon, he wants to end up early in the morning", or "if a teacher works 2 days in the afternoon, he wants to have a free morning", etc.
- In "teacher interval max day per week" and "teachers not available times" constraints weight must be 100%. Why? I'm trying to translate teacers' preferences, for example a teacher who would prefer not to work from 8-9h. It's a wish, but if he has to work at this interval he could.
- A constraint for mutiple teachers, but not for all. A list like in the define activities dialog to be able to add several teachers. Because if you have to add a constraint for *almost* everybody, you have to add it manually for every one.
- In activities dialog, it would be better to display the information in a grid (like in an spreadsheet), and even to be able to update the cells clicking over them, without need to enter in the modify dialog. Also could be useful a copy-paste method in this grid, to duplicate them easyly. This idea could apply to other dialogs, as constraints ones.

Thanks for you attention once again,

  ßingen.

[Liviu Lalescu]

Hi again,

I want to add some more suggestions from my experience with FET.

- Multiple conditions. Maybe it's too difficult, but it would be very powerful to be able to combine constraints with logical operators (with, for example, "NOT" and "OR" would be enough). So it would be possible to implement conditions as: "if a teacher works some day in the afternoon, he wants to end up early in the morning", or "if a teacher works 2 days in the afternoon, he wants to have a free morning", etc.

Too difficult because of algorithm and way to express such a constraint.

- In "teacher interval max day per week" and "teachers not available times" constraints weight must be 100%. Why? I'm trying to translate teacers' preferences, for example a teacher who would prefer not to work from 8-9h. It's a wish, but if he has to work at this interval he could.

Teacher not available is with 100%, because not available slots are not gaps. You can use activities preferred times with weight <100.0, but gaps will be counted. If a slot is not 100% forbidden, then it must be counted as a gap.

For interval, is the same as max days per week. If you use weight <100.0, you'll get bad timetables (the constraint is mainly unrespected). This is because of the algorithm.

- A constraint for mutiple teachers, but not for all. A list like in the define activities dialog to be able to add several teachers. Because if you have to add a constraint for *almost* everybody, you have to add it manually for every one.

Yes, I know. Nasty problem. I am bad at interfaces.

- In activities dialog, it would be better to display the information in a grid (like in an spreadsheet), and even to be able to update the cells clicking over them, without need to enter in the modify dialog. Also could be useful a copy-paste method in this grid, to duplicate them easyly. This idea could apply to other dialogs, as constraints ones.

Difficult. I am bad at interfaces. I hope someone better will come to do a better interface.