Seat the top table, then fill the room

A button that fills every empty seat. The top table is done properly, because its order is fixed and there is nothing to decide. Everybody else is dropped into the first seat going, which will be visibly wrong and is meant to be.

This ticket owns the seating model that everything after it is built on.

The model

• A guest occupies a numbered seat at a table, not merely a table
• A round table is a ring: its first and last seats are next to each other
• The top table is a line: its first and last seats are not
• The protocol order is defined once, as data. Everything that places or checks the top table reads that one definition

The top table

Its order is not a preference. The venue has it printed and the photographer's running order depends on it, so there is exactly one right answer for a given number of seats.

• Eight seats fill in the protocol order
• Fewer than eight seats fill from the middle outward, and the roles that do not fit are seated together at the nearest round table
• A protocol role nobody holds leaves its seat empty rather than promoting anyone
• Nobody without a protocol role is ever seated at the top table. Seats beyond the eighth stay empty

The fill

• Every remaining guest is seated in a remaining seat
• Placement asks the hard rules whether a seat is allowed. None are registered yet, so this fills in order — but it is the reason TT-14 can make this rule-led without editing any of it
• Never moves or displaces a pinned guest
• Reports how many guests it could not seat, if the seats ran out
• Running it twice with the same guest list, the same pins and the same registered rules produces the same plan

Open, for Priya

The protocol gives eight seats and the six-seat case. TT-3 lets someone type any number. Even sizes follow from filling outward from the middle; odd ones do not say which of the outermost pair is dropped. Built to leave the higher-numbered seat empty until told otherwise.