Locking/Unlocking activities

[alex]

After using FET-READ by Petros Nouvakis I realized that some features of FET such as Locking/Unlocking activities after the generation of a timetable or assigning an activity (or more activities) to specific time slots (an activity has a preferred time slot) before generating the timetable, are highly useful under certain circumstances. FET has some really nice options for locking/unlocking activities, but a GUI similar to FET-READ seems to add flexibility to the process. If the user could lock/unlock all the activities, or some of them (via spreadsheet-like selection options; columns, rows, all activities, etc.) or place one ore more activities in the preferred time slots, the process would be simplified. Liviu, is it possible to implement such an "extension" (similar to FET-READ, but with more options) as a part of FET itself? Sometimes the semi-manual timetable editing (or preparation) is necessary... Of course the user should be really careful, especially if his manual adjustments do not match the constraints... Thanks.

[Liviu Lalescu]

FET has the option to lock/unlock all activities.

Unfortunately, I don't have experience in drag/drop usage.

I would prefer to keep FET as an automatic timetabling program, and other programs can use the engine. It is simpler for me this way.

Also, I did not run FET-READ, since it is not available on GNU/Linux.

Also, financial support is small, so I cannot dedicate myself to working on new features.

[alex]

Thank you for responding!

[alex]

Liviu... about locking and unlocking activities...
After generating a timetable and pressing the "Teachers" tab, the generated timetable appears in a teachers-days-horizontal-like form. Of course we can lock and unlock activities on this type of timetable. I wonder if it's easy (for you) to add an alternative form. I think that the teachers-time-horizontal-like form is easier to use for locking/unlocking activities, since it presents the whole timetable at once. What do you think? Thanks!

[Liviu Lalescu]

I am not sure I like the idea for the official FET. The reasons are that there is a single button for the teachers' timetable. Also, the table might be too large. Also, other people might want other kinds of views.

But the idea might not be too difficult to implement (not too many changes from a copy/paste from old code). Maybe we could derive a custom version (at least for now) and see how it behaves. Let me know your opinion.

[alex]

Liviu, I think that it would be easier if this teachers-time-horizontal-like timetable had just the necessary information and nothing more. I.e. just the teachers' names and the student groups (and the locked/unlocked indication). This would result in a far more "compact" timetable than including information such as subject titles and tags.

[Liviu Lalescu]

OK. This is even more customized and I don't think other users would use this.

Let me know if you would like such a custom version, and I'll try to do it.

[alex]

Liviu, I can do whatever I need with the current type of locking/unlocking. Simply, this type of locking/unlocking activities that I suggested would make the process faster for me. It's not really crucial to make a custom version for this, if the other users are not going to use it. Thanks!

[Liviu Lalescu]

OK then, I'll add your request in the TODO file and I'll think about it.