More import/convert options

[Željko Vrabec]

Hi guys!

First of all, I'm not sure if this is an appropriate question, but is there any way to import asc schedule and convert it into fet?

Thanks in advance!

[Liviu Lalescu]

Hello, cracker_vic,

No, surely not an inappropriate question! We welcome any ideas, even if they refer to competition.

First of all, my question is, do you consider aSc Timetables made a better computation of the schedule than FET and you want to import it (the timetable) just to display it (the timetable) in FET or TiTiTo?

Then, I know that aSc Timetables implemented a long time ago a FET import, but it worked bad when I tried it. Unfortunately, the notions in different timetabling software are very different and it is difficult to convert automatically.

Then, I think aSc Timetables has a proprietary format. I am not sure, maybe they have XML export, but it might be only enabled if you buy it.

Then, a big problem with FET is the lack of financial support.

It is Volker's board, about TiTiTo, so I hope he will answer, maybe better than me.

[Volker Dirr]

Since I already have converters in TiTiTo, I might also add one for aSc.
Sadly with the aSc Demo version I is impossible to export and save files and there is also no description of the file format. So I can do it only if you help me.

I fear it will be nearly impossible, if aSc can only export a binary file format.
But if there are text export file formats, then you could sent me same sample files.
Start with a basic easy sample file and give my more difficult ones later.
I will have a look and might code it.

[Željko Vrabec]

Hello, cracker_vic,

No, surely not an inappropriate question! We welcome any ideas, even if they refer to competition.

First of all, my question is, do you consider aSc Timetables made a better computation of the schedule than FET and you want to import it (the timetable) just to display it (the timetable) in FET or TiTiTo?

Then, I know that aSc Timetables implemented a long time ago a FET import, but it worked bad when I tried it. Unfortunately, the notions in different timetabling software are very different and it is difficult to convert automatically.

Then, I think aSc Timetables has a proprietary format. I am not sure, maybe they have XML export, but it might be only enabled if you buy it.

Then, a big problem with FET is the lack of financial support.

It is Volker's board, about TiTiTo, so I hope he will answer, maybe better than me.

Hi Liviu!

No, I don't think asc is any better then fet. In contrary, I think that fet uses better algorithm. Since I'm a linux user for a long time I can't even run it except maybe in virtualbox or wine what I don't like at all.

[Željko Vrabec]

Since I already have converters in TiTiTo, I might also add one for aSc.
Sadly with the aSc Demo version I is impossible to export and save files and there is also no description of the file format. So I can do it only if you help me.

I fear it will be nearly impossible, if aSc can only export a binary file format.
But if there are text export file formats, then you could sent me same sample files.
Start with a basic easy sample file and give my more difficult ones later.
I will have a look and might code it.

Hi Volker!

I have got this year a duty of remaking schedule that is already made (in asc of course) which I don't want to use (hard core linux user philosophy ). Yes, they make binary *.roz file, but their schedule can be exported as xml. Would that help?

Thanks in advance!

[Volker Dirr]

Yes. xml is a text file. Let me have a look at it. But you are aware that TiTiTo is closed source only, don't you?

[Željko Vrabec]

Yes. xml is a text file. Let me have a look at it. But you are aware that TiTiTo is closed source only, don't you?

Yes, and I'm thinking about buying it anyway. At the moment I'm still trying to figure out all the possibilities it offers. Can you please send me a private message about the price, conditions and other info? Give me a day or 2 to get full xml database. A the moment all I have is a part of it, but I'm not sure if it contains all of nodes and relevant data.

[Volker Dirr]

I just done a quick view.
Most parts are pretty strait forward.
I think I can write a converter, but I am not sure how fast I am. I am very busy next week and I have some other TODOs on my list first. So it might take a few weeks.

I am not sure about line 211 and similar. There is for example "1. Grupa". hmm... Is that "1. Grupa" more like a FET subgroup? I don't think so, since there is also something like "divisiontag="1"". So I guess it is more like a FET division.
I can see similar names and divisions in other years. I guess they are separated per year, don't they? Or are they over all students of the whole school? (I don't think so, since in that case there are much too less groups for so many students.)

I will write you an email tomorrow morning.

[Željko Vrabec]

I just done a quick view.
Most parts are pretty strait forward.
I think I can write a converter, but I am not sure how fast I am. I am very busy next week and I have some other TODOs on my list first. So it might take a few weeks.

I am not sure about line 211 and similar. There is for example "1. Grupa". hmm... Is that "1. Grupa" more like a FET subgroup? I don't think so, since there is also something like "divisiontag="1"". So I guess it is more like a FET division.
I can see similar names and divisions in other years. I guess they are separated per year, don't they? Or are they over all students of the whole school? (I don't think so, since in that case there are much too less groups for so many students.)

I will write you an email tomorrow morning.

There is no rush!

There is set of subjects that are not obligatory but students choose those if they want. In every class there are students who choose such subjects and students who don't. 1. Grupa is just a mark for group of students within a class (group) who choose some of non obligatory subjects. In the terms of FET it would be a tag.

Attribute "divisiontag" is basically a tag in fet, and the value 1 or 2 means there is kind of tags (class is divided into 2 groups by non obligatory subjects, and into two groups by gender - Djevjočice and Dječaci). In my opinion those "gender" tags are set by default but optional to use. Attribute "entireclass = "1/0"" means if group contains all the students of the class or not. And yes, students are divided into years and then separated into classes. Divisions are separated per year.  I hope you get the picture.

[Liviu Lalescu]

I think optional subjects are not FET tags, but year(s) automatic division(s) by selecting categories (there is a button to a new dialog in the years dialog).

[Volker Dirr]

hmm..

Code Select Expand

<class id="5305084B6C6E7E4A" name="1.a" short="1.a" teacherid="" classroomids="F027BAB9B9A10011" grade="" partner_id=""/>
As a human I can see that this should be year 1, Class 1.a.
But in fact a bit strange in the dataset, since in the line no "grade" is set, even grade/year exist:

Code Select Expand

<grade name="Grade 1" short="G 1" grade="1"/>
hmm...
You are mixing terms.
I must ask one more time in this example:

Code Select Expand

<group id="43DA6F14B0F7BF4C" name="1. Grupa" classid="5305084B6C6E7E4A" studentids="" entireclass="0" divisiontag="1" studentcount=""/>
...
<group id="A4A0C82446126AE1" name="1. Grupa" classid="005AA1732000C169" studentids="" entireclass="0" divisiontag="1" studentcount=""/>
Let me know if I am wrong. But it looks like "1. Grupa" can contain only students of it's own class (So it is only a FET subgroup). It look like it can not contain students of 2 different classes in this group. How do aSc do shared groups? Only by connecting those activities/lessons with a same starting time constraint? Would be nice if i can see such a sample also.
So for example how does it look like if the classes of an year are separated into different groups for religion courses?

[Željko Vrabec]

Give me a day or two to get full xml.

[gradgrind]

I had to use aSc a few years ago – it was the only thing I needed Windows for. It was quite good for manual placement of the lessons, but the automatic placement wasn't good enough for our timetables. There is a bit of (old and incomplete) documentation of the XML available. It can also export Excel tables (if that's any better for you), if you have Excel installed. I couldn't test this because I never did have Excel installed.

I ended up using my own tables for the data, converting these to a fet file, then using the fet results to provide rooms and times for my data. This data I then converted to aSc-XML which I loaded into aSc for the final manual adjustments and the printing of the timetables. The structures in aSc and fet are not entirely equivalent, but I could design my data such that they were somewhat compatible. Not every aspect of the data could be imported into aSc, one problem being that the XML-import function was incomplete (it could only import one room for a lesson), which made the whole process even more time-consuming. It sort-of worked, but is not really to be recommended!

I'm afraid I didn't do the conversion the other way, from aSc-XML to fet, but I did experiment a bit to discover missing details of the XML. I'm not sure how much I could remember, as it was some time ago, but maybe I can help a little if you decide to go for it and get stuck somewhere.

[Volker Dirr]

Thank you. The native xml file should be better than an Excel file (even modern Excel is also only xml).
Yes, the main problem will the students structure and rooms. I fear from FET to aSc will be only possible with easy data sets, since FET support so many special features like sharing a year with an group in an other year and a subgroup from a third year at the same time.
I will try to import at least most of the basic stuff (teachers, students, rooms, subjects, activities). It will be probably impossible to convert all constraints.
I think I just need some more sample files to test, since sadly, as in every timetabling tool, there are so many different variants how guys enter the data.
So if someone has a few xml sample files, please sent them to me.
(So currently I mainly want to see how aSc stores religion courses if you have a school with classes. And I want to see how it stores the students structure, if you school don't have classes, but courses only. And how it save courses that share students from different years (if aSc has that feature. Maybe it is only emulated by using same starting time constraints.)
You can sent to u6m4@timetabling.de

[gradgrind]

Hello Volker,

I don't have any exports from aSc because, like I wrote, I only did it the other way round. aSc does support lessons with groups from different years, something like:

Code Select Expand

<lesson id="XXX_25" classids="11K,12K" subjectid="MaLk" groupids="11K-alle,12K-alle" teacherids="AE,MK,MT" durationperiods="1" periodsperweek="2" classroomids="11K,RS,12K,NNN"/>
As far as I know, it doesn't support same-starting-time constraints. That was one of the annoying things about it. In fact I think I never used the aSc constraints, I did all that in fet.

I'll send you one of the python files I used for generating aSc-XML. Maybe there's something in there that could help you.