How it works
No magic, just arithmetic.
Brugdag does what you'd do on a beer mat, but for every possibility at once. Here's how, step by step.
First the days already off
Brugdag works out the ten legal public holidays for the year. Easter comes from a fixed formula (the Meeus, Jones and Butcher method); Easter Monday, Ascension and Whit Monday follow from it.
Added to those are the days you don't work, and the Community holidays or sector days you tick yourself.
Then every possible bridge
A bridge is a run of working days next to a day that's already off. Take those days as leave, and everything before and after becomes one stretch off. Brugdag writes out every such run, with what it costs (days of leave) and what it gives (days off in a row).
Then the best combination
From all those bridges Brugdag picks the combination that gives the most within your leave, without two bridges touching. It uses dynamic programming: no guessing, always the same answer to the same question.
What "the most" means, you choose. Many long weekends takes short bridges of at most three days of leave. As many days as possible counts every day off, but only from real bridges (next to a holiday) and real holidays of nine days or more: otherwise a lone Friday would always win and you'd get twenty identical weekends. On a tie it picks the week around a holiday, then summer. Whatever is left goes into long weekends. A few long holidays favours stretches of nine days or more.
Across the year's end
The Christmas holiday runs over New Year. So Brugdag looks from 20 December of the year before to 10 January of the year after, so a bridge around Christmas counts in full. It only places days of leave in the year you choose.
School holidays only from the source
The school holidays come from the official calendars of the Flemish and the French Community, with the date we checked them. Brugdag doesn't extrapolate them: if a year isn't in the source yet, the planner says so.
What Brugdag doesn't know
Your replacement days (your employer sets them), a collective shutdown like the construction holiday, extra days from your collective agreement, and whether your employer approves your leave. Brugdag doesn't know half days either. Put such days in your plan yourself: tap them in the calendar.
Try it with your own year.
No account, and nothing leaves your device.