[kde-edu]:

[Lalescu Liviu]

Hello.

I forgot to tell you something about the program. Basically, it is not a GUI program. The main program accepts as input an XML file (and a small initialization file) and outputs some XML and text files.  I dislike designing GUI's, but it was necessary, so that people can understand my program. I do not have experience with Qt nor KDE, so that is why the interface looks so ugly and complicated. I just wanted some people to test the program and tell me if it is useful, before I would completely finish it, and also I was waiting for some advices abot how the interface would have to look and for other suggestions (even encouragements, because so far only 1 or 2 people were interested. And GNU didn't have the time to evaluate my program for 3 months now).

I can solve the requirements you told me about (not without difficulty). I will add them on the TODO list.

In the meantime, any suggestions and reports are welcome.

Thank you for your interest,
Liviu.


At 13:44 4/10/2003, you wrote:
>Dominique Devriese writes:
>
>  Lalescu> The program is designed to automatically process a set of
>  Lalescu> teacher-subject-set of students activities (input) and to
>  Lalescu> output a suitable timetable (only hour allocation for
>  Lalescu> now, no rooms allocation, but this is a minor problem,
>  Lalescu> not so important and easy to solve). The program also
>  Lalescu> allows for some restrictions to be input by the user, for
>  Lalescu> example that a certain teacher is not available in a
>  Lalescu> period.
>
>  Lalescu> Yes, the program needs much work to be finished. I am
>  Lalescu> open to any suggestions. I don't want to impose Qt, I
>  Lalescu> just want a universal easy to understand GUI programming
>  Lalescu> (I thought free Qt was recommendable).
>
>Well, the problem is that KDE-Edu as a subproject likes to have its
>applications properly integrated with KDE, and this means using the
>KDE libraries, I think.  Qt libraries on windows are being
>discontinued on windows for Qt 3.* anyway, so if you want to stay
>Qt-only for that reason, I guess it's not really going to stay that
>way..
>Regarding the GUI, I'd suggest to split the window up into a single
>main window, and some dialogs to let the user input more specialized
>things..  The window is much too large to be manageable for a user, I
>think..  Maybe you could make it more intuitive by using a Wizard,
>which orders the steps a user needs to take for generating a
>timetable.  Or perhaps split up the various things into different tabs
>or subdialogs, it's up to what you like, I guess :)
>
>  Lalescu> All I want is to make this program widely available and
>  Lalescu> to have a team of interested people working on it. I am
>  Lalescu> not sure if I can be an active maintainer. I will work on
>  Lalescu> it in the future if I will have the time to. But maybe
>  Lalescu> other people will work on it more than me in the future.
>
>The problem is that there are lots of interesting things to be done
>for KDE-Edu, but that we ( the KDE-Edu team ) are with a bit too few
>to do it all..  That's why I was asking if you would be willing to
>actively maintain your program..  The main advantages of having your
>program included into KDE-Edu, I think, are the increased exposure and
>the communication with the rest of the team.  Getting people to help
>with your program is rather hard, since most capable people already
>have a lot to do..
>
>  Lalescu> The program uses a genetic algorithm (evolutionary
>  Lalescu> program). I cannot do a comparison with some other
>  Lalescu> programs, because I never had the time to enter a real
>  Lalescu> timetabling information (from a faculty or high
>  Lalescu> school). I hope someone will want to do that in the
>  Lalescu> future. But, with very difficult randomly chosen data,
>  Lalescu> the program seems to be generating very good timetables,
>  Lalescu> very fast. I have made a random dataset containing 70
>  Lalescu> teachers, 80 subgroups of students and 500 activities
>  Lalescu> (lectures), with about 70% hours occupied from 60 per
>  Lalescu> week for the students. It produces a valid timetable in
>  Lalescu> about 10 minutes or less on my 1700+ Athlon.
>
>Seems like you've done a good job there :-)
>cheers
>domi
>
>-- 
>He jests at scars who never felt a wound.
>                -- Shakespeare, "Romeo and Juliet, II. 2"
>
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Nota: RAV AntiVirus poate sa nu detecteze toti virusii noi sau toate variantele lor.
Va rugam sa luati in considerare ca exista un risc de fiecare data cand deschideti
fisiere atasate si ca MobiFon nu este responsabila pentru nici un prejudiciu cauzat
de virusi.

Disclaimer: RAV AntiVirus may not be able to detect all new viruses and variants.
Please be aware that there is a risk involved whenever opening e-mail attachments
to your computer and that MobiFon is not responsible for any damages caused by
viruses.