Shortcut Name Generator

[Volker Dirr]

Maybe someone knows a tool that can care about shortcuts?

As you know i highly suggest to use shortcuts in FET (since the timetables will be too large if you don't use shortcuts).

Now i am thinking of a tools that can do this:
a) import last name and/or shortcut (optional also first name) by csv
b) enter last name and/or shortcut (optional also first name)
c) give a warning if a shortcut already exist
d) suggest a shortcut so i don't need to enter it myself
e) give a warning if a shortcut is too similar to an already existing one. (For example teacher Mr. Westwood and teacher Mrs. Westtown. Maybe you set shortcut length to 5 characters. So you might use shortcut WESTW und WESTT. But sadly this shortcuts are very similar. So it should warn if there are too many similar characters at the same position. So it is better to choose a more different shortcuts like WESTW and WTOWN)
d) print the names and shortcuts

Anybody knows such a tool?

[Zsolt Udvari]

Anybody knows such a tool?

Code Select Expand

$ md5 -qs "Teacher Name" | cut -b 1-6                                                                                                               
77d96a


I think it would be the best when FET generate automatically from teacher's name: first M char from last name and first N char from first name (maybe the M and N can be user-specified, maybe an optional infix string: Nam-Te). And the user can override this generated shortcut.

[Volker Dirr]

Ok. Thank you. I asked for good human readable shortcut. Not computer readable shortcut.
In fact your suggestion (taking first letters) is the way we do it and i noticed that some guys sometimes misread, because shortcuts are too similar. So my main focus of the request is in fact point c) and e).
So as you can see in my first example taking only the first letters might be too bad/similar and an other shortcut might be much better.
Especially longer name can be shorten much better on different ways. So it will avoid shortcuts that are too similar. So anyone with an other suggestion / tool that care about that?