+Title: Debian Edu software: Free Timetabling Software
+Tags: english, debian edu
+Date: 2012-07-07 09:40
+
+<p>Included in <ahref="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu</a> is a
+large collection of end user and school specific software. One of the
+packages not installed by default but provided in the Debian archive
+for schools to install if they want to, is a system to automatically
+plan the school time table using information about available teachers,
+classes and rooms, combined with the list of required courses and how
+many hours each topic should receive. The software is
+<a href="http://lalescu.ro/liviu/fet/">named FET</a>, and it provide a
+graphical user interface to input the required information, save the
+result in a fairly simple XML format, and generate time tables for
+both teachers and students. It is available both for
+<a href="http://lalescu.ro/liviu/fet/download.html">Linux, MacOSX and
+Windows</a>.</p>
+
+<p>This is <a href="http://lalescu.ro/liviu/fet/features.html">the
+feature list</a>, liftet from the project web site:</p>
+
+<p><ul>
+ <li><p>FET is free software, licensed under the GNU GPL v2 or later.
+ You can freely use, copy, modify and redistribute it</p>
+ </li>
+
+ <li><p>Localized to en_US (US English, default), ar (Arabic), ca (Catalan), da (Danish),
+ de (German), el (Greek), es (Spanish), fa (Persian), fr (French), gl (Galician), he (Hebrew),
+ hu (Hungarian), id (Indonesian), it (Italian), lt (Lithuanian),
+ mk (Macedonian), ms (Malay), nl (Dutch), pl (Polish), pt_BR (Brazilian Portuguese), ro (Romanian),
+ ru (Russian), si (Sinhala), sk (Slovak), sr (Serbian), tr (Turkish), uk (Ukrainian), uz (Uzbek)
+ and vi (Vietnamese) (incompletely for some languages)</p>
+ </li>
+
+ <li><p>Fully automatic generation
+ algorithm, allowing also semi-automatic or manual allocation</p>
+ </li>
+
+ <li><p>Platform independent
+ implementation, allowing running on GNU/Linux, Windows, Mac and any
+ system that Qt supports</p>
+ </li>
+
+ <li><p>Flexible modular
+ XML format for the input file, allowing editing with an XML editor
+ or by hand (besides FET interface)</p>
+ </li>
+
+ <li><p>Import/export from CSV format</p>
+ </li>
+
+ <li><p>The resulted timetables
+ are exported into HTML, XML and CSV formats</p>
+ </li>
+
+ <li><p>Flexible students
+ structure, organized into sets: years, groups and subgroups. FET allows
+ overlapping years and groups and non-overlapping subgroups. You can even
+ define individual students (as separate sets)</p>
+ </li>
+
+ <li><p>Each constraint has a weight percentage, from 0.0% to 100.0%
+ (but some special constraints are allowed to have only 100% weight percentage)</p>
+ </li>
+
+ <li><p>Limits for the algorithm (all these limits can be increased on demand,
+ as a custom version, because this would require a bit more memory):</p>
+
+ <ul>
+ <li><p>Maximum total number of hours (periods) per day: 60</p></li>
+
+ <li><p>Maximum number of working days per week: 35</p></li>
+
+ <li><p>Maximum total number of teachers: 6000</p></li>
+
+ <li><p>Maximum total number of sets of students: 30000</p></li>
+
+ <li><p>Maximum total number of subjects: 6000</p></li>
+
+ <li><p>Virtually unlimited number of activity tags</p></li>
+
+ <li><p>Maximum number of activities: 30000</p></li>
+
+ <li><p>Maximum number of rooms: 6000</p></li>
+
+ <li><p>Maximum number of buildings: 6000</p></li>
+
+ <li><p>Possibility of adding multiple teachers and students sets for each activity.
+ (it is possible also to have no teachers or no students sets for an activity)</p></li>
+
+ <li><p>Virtually unlimited number of time constraints</p></li>
+
+ <li><p>Virtually unlimited number of space constraints</p></li>
+ </ul>
+
+ </li>
+
+ <li><p>A large and flexible
+ palette of time constraints:</p>
+ <ul>
+
+ <li><p>Break periods</p>
+ </li>
+
+ <li><p>For teacher(s):</p>
+ <ul>
+ <li><p>
+ Not available periods
+ </p></li>
+ <li><p>
+ Max/min days per week
+ </p></li>
+ <li><p>
+ Max gaps per day/week
+ </p></li>
+ <li><p>
+ Max hours daily/continuously
+ </p></li>
+ <li><p>
+ Min hours daily
+ </p></li>
+ <li><p>
+ Max hours daily/continuously with an activity tag
+ </p></li>
+ <li><p>
+ Respect working in an hourly interval a max number of days per week
+ </p></li>
+ </ul>
+ </li>
+
+ <li><p>For students (sets):</p>
+ <ul>
+ <li><p>
+ Not available periods
+ </p></li>
+ <li><p>
+ Begins early (specify max allowed beginnings at second hour)
+ </p></li>
+ <li><p>
+ Max gaps per day/week
+ </p></li>
+ <li><p>
+ Max hours daily/continuously
+ </p></li>
+ <li><p>
+ Min hours daily
+ </p></li>
+ <li><p>
+ Max hours daily/continuously with an activity tag
+ </p></li>
+ <li><p>
+ Respect working in an hourly interval a max number of days per week
+ </p></li>
+ </ul>
+ </li>
+
+ <li><p>For an activity or a set of activities/subactivities:</p>
+ <ul>
+ <li><p>
+ A single preferred starting time
+ </p></li>
+ <li><p>
+ A set of preferred starting times
+ </p></li>
+ <li><p>
+ A set of preferred time slots
+ </p></li>
+ <li><p>
+ Min/max days between them
+ </p></li>
+ <li><p>
+ End(s) students day
+ </p></li>
+ <li><p>
+ Same starting time/day/hour
+ </p></li>
+ <li><p>
+ Occupy max time slots from selection
+ (a complex and flexible constraint, useful in many situations)
+ </p></li>
+ <li><p>
+ Consecutive, ordered, grouped (for 2 or 3 (sub)activities)
+ </p></li>
+ <li><p>
+ Not overlapping
+ </p></li>
+ <li><p>
+ Max simultaneous in selected time slots
+ </p></li>
+ <li><p>
+ Min gaps between a set of (sub)activities
+ </p></li>
+ </ul>
+ </li>
+ </ul>
+
+ </li>
+
+ <li><p>A large and flexible
+ palette of space constraints:</p>
+ <ul>
+
+ <li><p>Room not available periods</p>
+ </li>
+
+ <li><p>For teacher(s):</p>
+ <ul>
+ <li><p>
+ Home room(s)
+ </p></li>
+ <li><p>
+ Max building changes per day/week
+ </p></li>
+ <li><p>
+ Min gaps between building changes
+ </p></li>
+ </ul>
+ </li>
+
+ <li><p>For students (sets):</p>
+ <ul>
+ <li><p>
+ Home room(s)
+ </p></li>
+ <li><p>
+ Max building changes per day/week
+ </p></li>
+ <li><p>
+ Min gaps between building changes
+ </p></li>
+ </ul>
+ </li>
+
+ <li><p>Preferred room(s):</p>
+ <ul>
+ <li><p>
+ For a subject
+ </p></li>
+ <li><p>
+ For an activity tag
+ </p></li>
+ <li><p>
+ For a subject and an activity tag
+ </p></li>
+ <li><p>
+ Individually for a (sub)activity
+ </p></li>
+ </ul>
+ </li>
+
+ <li><p>For a set of activities:</p>
+ <ul>
+ <li><p>
+ Occupy a maximum number of different rooms
+ </p></li>
+ </ul>
+ </li>
+
+ </ul>
+
+ </li>
+</ul></p>
+
+<p>I have not used it myself, as I am not involved in time table
+planning at a school, but it seem to work fine when I test it. If you
+need to set up your schools time table, and is tired of doing it
+manually, check it out.
+
+A quick summary on how to use it can be found in
+<a href="http://marvelsoft.co.in/wp/2012/03/generate-timetable-for-state-cbse-icse-igcse-schools-free/">a
+blog post from MarvelSoft</a>. If you find FET useful, please provide
+a recipe for us in the
+<a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu#Howtos">Debian Edu HowTo
+section</a>.</p>
+
+
+
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