blog/data/2012-07-07-debian-edu-fet.txt

   1 Title: Free Timetabling Software - nice free software
   2 Tags: english, debian edu
   3 Date: 2012-07-07 09:50
   4
   5 <p>Included in <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu</a> is a
   6 large collection of end user and school specific software.  One of the
   7 packages not installed by default but provided in the Debian archive
   8 for schools to install if they want to, is a system to automatically
   9 plan the school time table using information about available teachers,
  10 classes and rooms, combined with the list of required courses and how
  11 many hours each topic should receive.  The software is
  12 <a href="http://lalescu.ro/liviu/fet/">named FET</a>, and it provide a
  13 graphical user interface to input the required information, save the
  14 result in a fairly simple XML format, and generate time tables for
  15 both teachers and students.  It is available both for
  16 <a href="http://lalescu.ro/liviu/fet/download.html">Linux, MacOSX and
  17 Windows</a>.</p>
  18
  19 <p>This is <a href="http://lalescu.ro/liviu/fet/features.html">the
  20 feature list</a>, liftet from the project web site:</p>
  21
  22 <p><ul>
  23
  24   <li>FET is free software, licensed under the GNU GPL v2 or later.
  25     You can freely use, copy, modify and redistribute it </li>
  26
  27   <li>Localized to en_US (US English, default), ar (Arabic), ca
  28     (Catalan), da (Danish), de (German), el (Greek), es (Spanish), fa
  29     (Persian), fr (French), gl (Galician), he (Hebrew), hu
  30     (Hungarian), id (Indonesian), it (Italian), lt (Lithuanian), mk
  31     (Macedonian), ms (Malay), nl (Dutch), pl (Polish), pt_BR
  32     (Brazilian Portuguese), ro (Romanian), ru (Russian), si (Sinhala),
  33     sk (Slovak), sr (Serbian), tr (Turkish), uk (Ukrainian), uz
  34     (Uzbek) and vi (Vietnamese) (incompletely for some languages)
  35     </li>
  36
  37   <li>Fully automatic generation algorithm, allowing also
  38     semi-automatic or manual allocation</li>
  39
  40   <li>Platform independent implementation, allowing running on
  41     GNU/Linux, Windows, Mac and any system that Qt supports </li>
  42
  43   <li>Flexible modular XML format for the input file, allowing editing
  44     with an XML editor or by hand (besides FET interface)</li>
  45
  46   <li>Import/export from CSV format</li>
  47
  48   <li>The resulted timetables are exported into HTML, XML and CSV
  49     formats </li>
  50
  51   <li>Flexible students structure, organized into sets: years, groups
  52     and subgroups. FET allows overlapping years and groups and
  53     non-overlapping subgroups. You can even define individual students
  54     (as separate sets)</li>
  55
  56   <li>Each constraint has a weight percentage, from 0.0% to 100.0%
  57     (but some special constraints are allowed to have only 100% weight
  58     percentage)</li>
  59
  60   <li>Limits for the algorithm (all these limits can be increased on
  61     demand, as a custom version, because this would require a bit more
  62     memory):
  63     <ul>
  64       <li>Maximum total number of hours (periods) per day: 60</li>
  65       <li>Maximum number of working days per week: 35</li>
  66       <li>Maximum total number of teachers: 6000</li>
  67       <li>Maximum total number of sets of students: 30000</li>
  68       <li>Maximum total number of subjects: 6000</li>
  69       <li>Virtually unlimited number of activity tags</li>
  70       <li>Maximum number of activities: 30000</li>
  71       <li>Maximum number of rooms: 6000</li>
  72       <li>Maximum number of buildings: 6000</li>
  73       <li>Possibility of adding multiple teachers and
  74           students sets for each activity.  (it is possible
  75           also to have no teachers or no students sets for an
  76           activity)</li>
  77       <li>Virtually unlimited number of time constraints</li>
  78       <li>Virtually unlimited number of space constraints</li>
  79     </ul></li>
  80
  81   <li>A large and flexible palette of time constraints:
  82     <ul>
  83       <li>Break periods</li>
  84       <li>For teacher(s):
  85         <ul>
  86           <li>Not available periods</li>
  87           <li>Max/min days per week</li>
  88           <li>Max gaps per day/week</li>
  89           <li>Max hours daily/continuously</li>
  90           <li>Min hours daily</li>
  91           <li>Max hours daily/continuously with an activity tag</li>
  92
  93           <li>Respect working in an hourly interval a max number of
  94             days per week</li>
  95         </ul></li>
  96       <li>For students (sets):
  97         <ul>
  98           <li>Not available periods</li>
  99           <li>Begins early (specify max allowed beginnings at second hour)</li>
 100           <li>Max gaps per day/week</li>
 101           <li>Max hours daily/continuously</li>
 102           <li>Min hours daily</li>
 103           <li>Max hours daily/continuously with an activity tag</li>
 104
 105           <li>Respect working in an hourly interval a max number of
 106             days per week</li>
 107         </ul></li>
 108       <li>For an activity or a set of activities/subactivities:
 109         <ul>
 110           <li>A single preferred starting time</li>
 111           <li>A set of preferred starting times</li>
 112           <li>A set of preferred time slots</li>
 113           <li>Min/max days between them</li>
 114           <li>End(s) students day</li>
 115           <li>Same starting time/day/hour</li>
 116           <li>Occupy max time slots from selection (a complex and
 117             flexible constraint, useful in many situations)</li>
 118           <li>Consecutive, ordered, grouped (for 2 or 3 (sub)activities)</li>
 119           <li>Not overlapping</li>
 120           <li>Max simultaneous in selected time slots</li>
 121           <li>Min gaps between a set of (sub)activities</li>
 122         </ul></li>
 123     </ul></li>
 124
 125   <li>A large and flexible palette of space constraints:
 126     <ul>
 127       <li>Room not available periods</li>
 128       <li>For teacher(s):
 129         <ul>
 130           <li>Home room(s)</li>
 131           <li>Max building changes per day/week</li>
 132           <li>Min gaps between building changes</li>
 133         </ul>
 134       </li>
 135
 136       <li>For students (sets):
 137         <ul>
 138           <li>Home room(s)</li>
 139           <li>Max building changes per day/week</li>
 140           <li>Min gaps between building changes</li>
 141         </ul>
 142       </li>
 143       <li>Preferred room(s):
 144         <ul>
 145           <li>For a subject</li>
 146           <li>For an activity tag</li>
 147           <li>For a subject and an activity tag</li>
 148           <li>Individually for a (sub)activity</li>
 149         </ul>
 150       </li>
 151
 152       <li>For a set of activities:
 153         <ul>
 154           <li>Occupy a maximum number of different rooms</li>
 155         </ul>
 156       </li>
 157     </ul>
 158   </li>
 159 </ul></p>
 160
 161 <p>I have not used it myself, as I am not involved in time table
 162 planning at a school, but it seem to work fine when I test it.  If you
 163 need to set up your schools time table, and is tired of doing it
 164 manually, check it out.
 165
 166 A quick summary on how to use it can be found in
 167 <a href="http://marvelsoft.co.in/wp/2012/03/generate-timetable-for-state-cbse-icse-igcse-schools-free/">a
 168 blog post from MarvelSoft</a>.  If you find FET useful, please provide
 169 a recipe for the Debian Edu project in the
 170 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu#Howtos">Debian Edu HowTo
 171 section</a>.</p>