Custom FET BP - block planning (Need help choosing a custom version)

[Darren McDonald]

I should be able to provide an example at some point, but I probably won't have anything ready for another month or so (and I would need to anonymize the data as well). I'll let you know when I've got something.

One other suggestion: for those who would be using both the official FET and the custom version, it might be nice if the custom version had a slightly different icon (perhaps using another colour for the text, or another colour for the cube). Both versions look identical on the dock on a Mac (see below).

[Liviu Lalescu]

OK, Darren, I'll try later today some icons and let you know, so you can give me your opinion, and then I'll hopefully add it in the FET-BP version.

[Liviu Lalescu]

Darren, I managed to make something (after a long work, since I forgot how to, and because the old font I had is no longer accessible simply enough, and because Inkscape updated to a version which opens the old versions badly).

Please use the attached icons: get yourself the fet-bp.tar.bz2, unpack, rename the attached files to fet.icns, fet.ico, fet.png, and fet.svg and overwrite to icons/ and compile (fresh compile, start with an empty archive just downloaded). Then let me know.

You might use other methods to check if my new icons are good for you (as you like). You may request other changes just by seeing them.

[Darren McDonald]

I've downloaded the icons and they work to distinguish between the two versions, but I'd suggest using a solid colour for the text, particularly one that would also show well on darker backgrounds (see the image I've attached, the font outline isn't easily viewed on a darker background, and this makes the text hard to read). It might be better to just colour the box differently—people using a custom version should be able to remember which colour is used for the custom version.

[Liviu Lalescu]

Sorry for the long wait, today I had some other work. I am also very low-skilled in Inkscape.

I attach some tries. Only the last two are additionally in the png format. The rest are svg only.

The 4 variant (png) has a transparent box, the 5 variant (png) has a solid color box.

[Volker Dirr]

The colours of Darren Version are difficult to read.
The colours of your 3rd version are to monotonous.

In my opinion the best variants are (orderd from "good" too "bad"):
version 1
version 2
version 5
version 4

[Darren McDonald]

I've gone ahead and used version 5 myself (only because it is so easily distinguished from the other versions), but I don't mind any of the options.

However, after having looked into some of Apple's suggested guidelines, I've had some thoughts about the FET app icon (both the standard and custom versions).

What do you all think about a text-free icon? (So, perhaps just the box, with a different coloured box for the custom versions.) In any event, it would be useful to have higher resolution icons (even if the icon design goes unchanged), so this might also be an opportunity to refresh the icon design itself. I'm afraid I'm not much help here, since I've only dabbled in Inkscape myself.

[Liviu Lalescu]

I prefer to have a single icon file (for each format), and I think 128x128 is for now an acceptable compromise. I also cannot generate 256x256 or higher because new Inkscape won't open correctly/exactly the old fet.svg file (which is scalable and is the source).

Unfortunately, my artistic talent is very low.

I'll keep your suggestions in mind and maybe try something in the future. I think I'll add your suggestions in the TODO for now.

[Liviu Lalescu]

I updated to the latest, FET-5.44.0. There are some important bug fixes for the future Qt 5.15.0 - the combo boxes won't update in FET-5.43.v.

[Darren McDonald]

The Mac version of 5.44.0-bp is available for download here.

[Liviu Lalescu]

I updated to the latest, FET-5.44.2. A rare but important bug reported by Darren McDonald (if using special characters &, >, <, ", or ' in the names of the activity tags and using constraints activity tags not overlapping, the file will be saved corrupted).

[Darren McDonald]

The Mac version of 5.44.2-bp is now available for download here.

Thanks for this update Liviu!

[ChicagoPianoTuner]

I'm glad this is of use to other people! The challenge for me at the moment is creating the FET files, because there will end up being TONS of constraints that sometimes need to be added. For scale, my current FET file has ~1700 activities and the FET file is 300,000 lines long. I know that number of lines in a file is not indicative of number of constraints, but still, there's a lot going on.

The way I have things structured now involves 2 pieces, each of which is just a CSV:

• A table that contains basic info pertaining to a course (subject name, unique identifier for each section of the subject, teacher name, and FET duration)
• A table that contains student choices

I have the python scripts that create FET files from these tables, but they're quite specific to my use case. I'm working on getting everything into a github repo that others may find useful. I'll let you know how it's going as I make progress.

[Liviu Lalescu]

Thank you for the information, CPT!

The constraints in the .fet XML format are unfortunately taking a lot of characters/space. The real information might have been even 100 times lower if I used a personalized data format (for instance containing integers instead of names) instead of XML text; the speed of generation is not affected by the length of the .fet file so I preferred a simple format.

[ChicagoPianoTuner]

I agree that customization might make the input files smaller, but it's definitely much easier to read this way; there is no ambiguity or uncertainty about what anything means. I like it!