What counts as a quick change
Two numbers by the same dancer with fewer routines between them than the gap. The planner compares each dancer's consecutive numbers only: a dancer in numbers 2, 5 and 9 is checked 2 to 5 and 5 to 9. Back to back numbers, with nothing between, are always a quick change unless the gap is 0.
The gap, and a dancer's own gap
The gap is the number of routines a dancer needs between numbers. It starts at 3, which is about ten minutes in a show of three minute routines. A dancer with a harder change can have a larger gap of their own, and a dancer who only swaps shoes a smaller one. The gap guide turns routines into minutes.
Intermissions and act breaks
A break sits between two numbers. An intermission has minutes on the clock and, unless you turn it off, counts as a full gap: a dancer can close the first half and open the second. An act break divides the show into acts for pins and for the program but adds no time beyond the changeover and resets nothing. When a show has no breaks, the planner adds one intermission in the middle on the first build; breaks you add or move are kept.
Pins
A pin is a promise about where a routine goes: the opener, the closer, a locked number, just before or just after a break, or anywhere inside one act. The solver never breaks a pin. A pin that cannot be kept (two openers, a locked number past the end of the show, a break that does not exist) is named in a warning and that routine is ordered freely. Lock a routine where it stands with the Lock button on the running order.
Grouping preferences
Two optional preferences: spread levels, so two routines of one level do not follow each other, and keep a teacher's routines apart or together. They are preferences only: the planner never keeps a quick change to satisfy one.
More than one show
With two or more shows, each routine goes to one show, except routines marked as in every show. The split keeps the shows about the same length first, then keeps families (dancers sharing a family label) in one show, then keeps each dancer in one show. Routines can be kept in a named show. The two shows guide works an example.
How the order is built
The pinned places are filled first. A first order fills the remaining places left to right, taking at each step the routine that adds the least quick change for the dancers already placed. Then a search swaps and shifts routines thousands of times. Anything that improves the order is kept, and in the early rounds a handful of changes that make it worse are kept too, which is what frees the search from an order it cannot otherwise better. What it reports back is the best order it found. Fewer quick changes always beat narrower ones, and any quick change outweighs every grouping preference. The search is seeded, so the same show gives the same order every time. It runs in a background worker on the page; an 80 routine recital takes a fraction of a second on a laptop.
Why a quick change is still there
Every change the planner reports carries one of these reasons, on screen and on the quick change report:
- Too many numbers
- The dancer is in so many routines of that stretch of the show that no order can give every pair the gap. The reason shows the arithmetic.
- Pinned
- Both routines are held in place by pins, so neither can move.
- A swap would fix it
- Swapping one of the two routines with another fixes this change without a worse one. Hand made orders often have these.
- Blocked
- Every swap that fixes it gives someone a closer change, and the reason names who.
- Stuck
- No single swap of either routine fixes it: the dancer's other numbers or the pins are in the way.
Pasting a roster
Copy from any spreadsheet. Three shapes are read: one routine per row with its dancers after the title (a routine and dancer pair per row is the same shape), a table with a header row naming the columns, or a grid with dancers down the side and an x under each routine they are in. Dancers are matched by name, ignoring capitals and spacing; "Chen, Mia" in one cell is read as Mia Chen. Names that look like one dancer typed two ways are offered for merging, never merged on their own.
Where the roster is kept
On the one machine you built it on. There is no Showorder server: the ordering happens in the page itself, and the show lives in that browser's local storage until you clear it. Taking a show to the laptop at the theatre means saving a backup file and opening it there. The privacy page spells it out.