Fahrplan ID length, readability and memorability

[jjeising]

Last years congress' Fahrplan IDs ranged from ~8700 to ~9300. With other events during the year we'll definitely have five digit IDs soon.

While this is technically no problem, readability and memorability suffer with more than four digits (reading 10-532 may still work, but doesn't suggest itself immediately). Fahrplan IDs play are currently also prominently displayed in the tracker interface, where currently there is only space for four digits. This can be expanded but we should think about what format we like before touching this area.

There are currently two suggestions for abbreviations:

• Convert all incoming Fahrplan IDs to hexadecimal. This could maybe even be coordinated with frab. Examples:

Old	Option 1
1147	47B
5941	1735
8714	220A
9297	2351
11293	2C1D

Maximum number of IDs with four characters: 65.535

An issue here could be confusion with old or existing IDs outside of our services, if this is not done on frab level.

• Prefix existing IDs with a letter. Optional shorten by one character.

Old	Option 2	Option 3
1147	A1147	A147
5941	A5951	E951
8714	A8714	H951
9297	A9297	I297
11293	B1293	K293

Maximum number of IDs with five characters: 259.974 Maximum number of IDs with four characters: 25.974

Option 2 has five characters, but the first character should not change during an event, so four numbers are still nonambigious. Also B-1293 is a natural breakup.

Ideas, opinions and feelings? @derpeter @saerdnaer @a-tze @manno

[derpeter]

I would vote for keeping frab and tracker in sync regarding the id representation. I can work with 5 digits but i we probably will never exhaust that number space. Also we only have this problem at congress.

[jjeising]

Also we only have this problem at congress.

Once we crossed this affects all events managed with CCCs frab instance.

[manno]

I understand human readable IDs are an important feature. However frab currently uses the database ID. Changing this across the UI seems like a complicated change.

[a-tze]

I like the thoughts being made. But from the perspective of the work on an event I have to say that the human brain kills redundant digits anyway. If there is a 4 day congress and you swim in numbers from 10.000 to 11.999, the first digit is just ignored anyway. As I said, I like those ideas / IDs ;) but the straight and easy way is extending the tracker layout for five digits and be happy with that for a very long time.

[jjeising]

We now have five digit ids, going to close this until further issues arise.