Whew—I’ve dreaded doing this for a long time. But here goes...
I. The Purpose...
a. Bob’s schedule was designed for Bob L. to schedule classes at the Landon School in Bethesda MD. He needed a way to find conflicts among the courses he had scheduled and among students scheduled into those courses. This stack is what I came up with.
II. General Operation...
Here’s the way the thing works. The stack is made up of 5 backgrounds. The first, called ‘Kidcard’ is for the students’ schedules; the second, called ‘Courses’ compiles lists of students taking a particular course (for example, all students signed up for ‘Honors Geometry’);the third, called ‘Schedule’, is the grid on which the courses are scheduled; the fourth, called ‘Conflicts’, is called by the ‘Conflict’ button script to show the details of a course conflict; and the fifth, called ‘Classes’ is where the information entered into the ‘Schedule’ is stored in a form that can be used by the program. Using the program properly, the user is only aware of ‘Kidcard’ and ‘Schedule’, and if he wishes to use the course list compiler (we don’t), ‘Courses’.
THE COURSE LIST
(I’VE LEFT A SAMPLE COURSELIST IN THE STACK. USE IT FOR PRACTICE OR MAKE UP YOUR OWN)
First a ‘Course list’ made up. Press ‘course list’ button on the ‘kidcard’ background. There are four possible configurations for each line of the ‘Course list’ field:
1. Line # followed by a period [.], space, name of course IN ONE WORD [HARD SPACES MUST BE USED TO SEPARATE WORDS IN THE NAME OF A COURSE. I.E., THE COURSE NAME IS THE ‘LAST WORD’ OF THE LINE], [return];
2. Line # followed by a period, space, integer,space, name of course as above, [return];
3. Line # followed by a period, space, integer + name of course as above, [return]
4. Line # followed by a period, space, integer,space, Integer + name of course as above, [return].
Example of configuration # 1:
16. French III
Note that the space between ‘French’ and ‘III’ is a HARD SPACE [option-spacebar]. ‘16’ is the line number.
Example of configuration # 2
16. 3 French III
Example of configuration # 3
42. 6Honors Chemistry Note that the space between ‘Honors’ and ‘Chemistry’ is a HARD SPACE [option-spacebar].
Example of configuration # 4
42. 2 6Honors Chemistry
The line # will become the number of the course, the integer that follows, if any, is the number of sections of the course (if there is no integer, as in configurations 1 and 3, then it is assumed that there is only one section of that course.) The integer that is concatenated to the beginning of the name of the course is the number of times the course meets per week. At Landon, most courses meet 5 times a week at the same time each day, so the program favors that setting as a default. Thus from example 2 above, it can be assumed that each of the 3 sections of the course ‘French III’ meets 5 times per week at the same time each day. On the other hand, according to example 4, each of the 2 sections of‘Honors Chemistry’ meets 6 times a week, not necessarily at the same time each day.
At Landon, we make up a text document of the courses and then import it using the ‘Import text’ command from the ‘Externals’ menu. If you wish to enter courses manually, first select ‘Background’ from the ‘Edit’ menu. (The ‘Course list’ field is ‘Shared text’)
KIDCARDS
You really can’t do anything with this program until you’ve got a course list. Once that list is compiled you could go to the ‘Schedule’ background and begin scheduling your courses. If that’s you choice, skip down to the ‘SCHEDULE’ section. For those of you ready to make up the schedule cards for the students, stay here.
There are two ways to make up cards: by importing a text document or manually. Bob imports a basic data base and so each line of the text file looks like this:
DATA “John Smith”,VI, 1,16,12,64,13,0,0 [return]
You don’t need the word DATA, you don’t need the quotes around the name and you don’t need the zero’s at the end of the string.
You could have:
John Smith,VI,1,16,12,64,13 [return]
‘John Smith’ is the name, ‘VI’ is the ‘form’ (Landon is on the English system—Sixth form is 12th grade),each of the numbers that follows is the line number of the courses in the ‘Course list’ field.
Selecting ‘import text’ from the ‘Externals’ menu will lead you to the importation of the students’ schedule cards.
To do this manually, use the ‘New Card’ in combination with the ‘Enter Stuff’ button. (When ‘Entering Stuff’ when prompted for a course, you must give only its line number in the master list. It’s a good idea to keep a printed copy of this list handy.
Believe me, it’s easier to import.
OK, let’s go to...
SCHEDULE
From any Student’s schedule card [Kidcard] press the ‘Schedule’ button and you will end up at the Schedule grid.
Pressing the ‘Course list’ Button will import the course information from the master list and put it in the field at the lower right of the card. This is the ‘Unscheduled Course List’ This is the same information as in the master course list, but in a form usable for scheduling. The main difference is that the number indicating the number of sections has been eliminated; instead, the name of the course appears that number of times in the list.
To Schedule courses:
The procedure depends on the type of course you are scheduling. Find a course in the Unscheduled Course List whose name does not begin with a number. Click on it. You will be asked ‘What period’. Enter a number from 1 to 6 and click on ‘OK’
the course will be entered in the appropriate period. (Note the rows are periods, 1-6; the columns days, Mon-Fri) It will also enter the information on the appropriate card, creating one if necessary, in the background ‘Classes’.
Now let’s try scheduling a course whose name begins with a number, that is, a course that does not meet in the same period 5 times a week. When you click on this course in the Unscheduled Course List, a field will appear to the left of the list with the name of the selected course at the top. This is the Coursehandler. If the course meets, say, twice a week first period Monday and third period Wednesday, then click on the scrolling rectangles of the grid that represent those courses. First period Monday is the field in the upper left of the grid and third period Wednesday is the third field down in the center column. Note that as you click, letters appear under the course name in the coursehandler. These are the names of the fields in which you have entered the course. The names of the fields begin with ‘A’ in the upper left and move left to right until the alphabet is exhausted at which point the symbols !,@,#, and $ take over. (For example, a course that meets sixth period 5 days a week meets in periods ‘z!@#$”) When you have finished, the Coursehandler will disappear.
To delete a course:
Click on the name of the course in the grid with the [Shiftkey] down and follow directions.
To delete a course whose name begins with a number while entering:
1. If you accidently enter a course in the wrong period, click on that course while holding the [optionkey]. If your mistake is on the last entry and the Coursehandler has disappeared, you’ll have to delete the whole course and start over.
2. If you wish to delete all the sections you’ve enter so far. Say you’ve entered 3 of 6 sections of a course and you change your mind. Just click on the Coursehandler, and your work will be undone.
NOTE: ONCE A COURSE HAS BEEN SCHEDULED AND ERASED, IT WILL ALWAYS BE RETURNED TO THE UNSCHEDULED COURSE LIST IN THE NUMBER + COURSENAME CONFIGURATION AND WILL HAVE TO BE RESCHEDULED USING THE COURSEHANDLER.
Let’s assume that you’ve scheduled a few courses. Let’s see if your students have any conflicts. Push the ‘Kidcard’ button to navigate back to that background. Use the usual Hypercard navigation arrows found to the right of the schedule grid on each kidcard to get to a student you’d like to schedule. Press the ‘Compile schedule’ button. If there are no conflicts and if the student is signed up for at least 4 courses (four being the Landon minimum), at least one row of comma-separated letters will appear in the ‘Possiblecourses’ box above the schedule grid. Each comma-separated group represents its respective course in the list of courses at the bottom of the kidcard. If you click on the line of letters, the grid below will fill with his schedule. If there is more than one line, hit the ‘Erase’ button before clicking on another line of letters.
A FEW SCHEDULE FEATURES:
Let’s look at the ‘Schedule’ background for a minute.
Often a given period in the master schedule gets filled up so that scrolling becomes necessary. On anything short of a II ci, this is really slow. So just click on the field of the schedule grid you’d like to see and it will expand to show all the courses in it.
The button that once was ‘Course list’ is now ‘Empty’ and it does just that after a prompt. Not only does it erase the entire master schedule, but it also deletes all the cards except one from the ‘Classes’ field.
‘Sort’em’ sorts the kidcards in one of three ways.
‘Addacourse’ adds a course to the ‘unscheduled course list’, as well as the master list, as per user choice. It also adds sections of existing courses. ‘Addacourse’ also assigns a number to a new course. ADDACOURSE SCHEDULES ONE SECTION OF THE COURSE AS YOU ADD IT, SO KNOW WHERE YOU WANT IT BEFORE PRESSING BUTTON.
A FEW KIDCARD FEATURES:
The ‘Spares’ field is a holding pen used for juggling courses for all kinds of reasons—trying to resolve conflicts, holding courses a student might take or have to take (Honors vs. Non-Honors etc.) Bob finds it very useful.
Click on the name of a course in the field below the schedule grid removes that course from the list and puts it into the ‘Spares’ field (accessible with the ‘Spares’ button) If you wish to eliminate the course altogether from the list below the schedule grid, just hold down the [optionkey] as you click on the name.
Clicking on a course in the ‘Spares’ field adds that course to the list below. If you’d like to eliminate a course from the ‘Spares’ field without adding to the course list, just hold down the [optionkey] as you click on the course.
The way in which the ‘Seek Conflicts’ button works is strange indeed. (Bob wanted it this way. Even though he’s changed his mind, I’m too lazy to do anything about it.) If the ‘Conflicts’ field (upper right, below Address Book [directory] icon is not visible, a click on the button brings up a dialog box asking Search or Show. Show simply shows the field. If the field is visible, the button hides it. The ‘search selecting activates a choice that really simply asks if you want to compile all schedules or just those of one class. Try it, you’ll get the hang of it. By the way, clicking on a name in the ‘Conflicts’ field goes to that kidcard. The number after the name in the ‘Conflict’ field is the number of courses the student has signed up for.)
The Address book icon is a button for the directory of the names of all the students. Click on the name to go to his card. Holding the [optionkey] down while clicking sorts the directory, though I don’t think it ever needs it.
The ‘Enter Stuff’ button allows you to manually enter kidcard info. When prompted for courses, use the line number of the master course list.
The ‘Conflicts’ button puts all the scheduled sections of the courses a student has signed up for on the grid of the background ‘Conflicts’ and goes to that grid. This is useful for seeing exactly what caused the conflict.
Clinking on an open space in the ‘Conflicts’ grid brings you back to the kidcard. Holding down the [Shiftkey] while clicking brings you to the master schedule. Clicking on a course expands the selected field to show all courses therein.
The III, IV, V and VI buttons beneath the standard navigation buttons will take you to the first card of the corresponding form once the requested information is filled in.
The ‘Course override’ feature is used to add a section of another course to the grid. It’s special, Bob wanted it. I don’t really remember why.
The ‘Course list’ (made visible by the ‘Course List’ button. has several features. Clicking on a course will take you to that course’s ‘Classcard’. Cliking while holding the [optionkey] takes you to that course’s ‘Coursecard’
In the ‘background’ mode you can enter courses manually into the ‘Course list. Pressing the [tabkey] will put the cursor on a new line after the correct line number.
COURSES
Hit the ‘Courses’ button in either the ‘Kidcard’ or ‘Schedule’ background to get to the ‘Courses’ background. The ‘Compile Course List’ will compile a list of kids in a course with the name of the course at the top and the list below. I never really got around to refining this feature, as Bob doesn’t use it.
Please keep in touch, if you spend any time with this program at all. I’m up for adapting it to your situation, if I’ve got the time and am in the mood. In any case $$$$$$ could always persuade me. If you improve the stack or think of any cool new features be SURE to let me know. This took a lot of work—it was really a pet project. It’s not Shareware, it’s FREE, but I do ask for your suggestions, questions, help, criticism, improvements, etc.
