Installing LTSpice IV vs XVII

Hahahahahahaha....oh dear

On Sunday, July 15, 2018 at 12:17:08 PM UTC-4, snipped-for-privacy@gmail.com wrot e:

recent download is years old and won't update because ADI isn't supporting the old Linear web site I suppose. I see they have an XP compatible downl oad (LTS IV) which also wown't update and a newer XVII version which I expe ct is current. I recall someone here didn't want to use this newer version . Was that just jitters or is there a reason to avoid the newer version? Certainly they can't goof up the user interface as nearly anything would be an improvement.

I spoke too soon. I tend to maximize each panel within LTspice and switch between them with Cntl-Tab. In version XVII this messes up the plot window because holding down the Cntl key seems to move or redraw the window dimen sions in some way. I'm constantly using the redraw command.

Rick C.

Yes, that new "feature" might be better if it was constrained to just horizontal movement by default and press alt or something to move vertically too.

boB

Yeah I didn't think the UI could get any more clunky either. After giving XVII a try I admit I was wrong

Just because a UI is so terrible, don't assume it can't become even worse in the next release. You've only got to look at the horror of the winXP GUI (compared to the sanity and utility of win2k (and win95 for that matter) and then witness its successor, Vista, to see that a UI

*can* be made even worse despite thinking it surely can't get any worse and then it seemingly pulls back a little on the crap factor with the next version, win7 before it plummets downhill once again into win8 before taking a final nosedive into Microsoft's latest abortion of an exploitative OS, win10.

No Siree! Assuming stuff can only improve is usually a big mistake these days with most software products. The best you can hope for is that it gets no worse than it already is. :-(

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Johnny B Good

Try Classic Shell: which undoes much of the damage done my Microsoft's "improvements" to the Windoze start menu and user interface. More: Unfortunately, it won't fix LTSpice XVII.

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Jeff Liebermann     jeffl@cruzio.com 
150 Felker St #D    http://www.LearnByDestroying.com 
Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com 
Skype: JeffLiebermann     AE6KS    831-336-2558

XVII works fine for me. And it's free.

My only mild complaint is that I have to manually shuffle semicolons to switch between transient and AC sweeps, and the edit-simulation tabs are all tangled. I've emailed Mike about this, and he says it works the way he likes, and he's the author, and it's free.

I agree about Classic Shell, but I wish someone would fix the erratic jumping file list in Explorer. How could Microsoft ship anything so dumb? Maybe they do all their Windows development under Linux.

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John Larkin         Highland Technology, Inc 

lunatic fringe electronics

It happens with other consumer software too e.g. video games. Lots of software projects are done on a tight budget and timeframe because it's about making money at the end of the day and most games that are released never become extremely popular so git-r-done kludge "engineering" works just fine, the project will be forgotten in a year anyway.

But then sometimes against all odds the developers end up with a hit on their hands and customers start demanding more, more content, expansion packs, bug fixes, updates, mechanic patches, and so forth.

You don't want to turn money down but the problem is often that the foundation wasn't really well-laid to begin with, and then you start having to pile on more stuff anyway because that's what people pay for, nobody is paying for a small team to take two months out to do a ground-up "proper" rewrite from the customer's perspective it's a not-my-problem.

And the problem is just more unconstrained there are a zillion brands of hardware manufacturer and PC manufacturer and peripheral manufacturer and graphics processor manufacturer and audio interface manufacturer. Everyone expects the software to work great on their hardware. There are some vaguely standardized APIs like e.g. OpenGL and you more or less have to assume that the hardware manufacturer and device driver writers implemented them correctly. Did they really? Hope so. Cannot say for sure.

You'll hear about it real soon if someone didn't but the customer will likely blame you first, not them.

If I recall, you're using Win 7. I don't see a jumping file list problem on various Win 7 machines unless the files shown in the window are being modified or files are being added or deleted. I'll double check when I drag myself to my palatial office today.

You might consider using an alternative File Manager or Explorer: I've played with a few of these in the past, but never bothered to actually use one on a daily basis.

If I do need something better, I use various version of Tree Size Free: because most of my file management needs involve directory manipulation, not file manipulation.

I've given up complaining about how Microsoft does things. The "ribbon" menu in MS Office and the spyware in Win 10 were the last straw. Still, I can profit from such problems. I'm in the computer repair and consulting business. If Microsoft had produced a perfect product, I would be out of business. As long as MS continues to product buggy software and user hostile UI's, my business should be profitable.

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Jeff Liebermann     jeffl@cruzio.com 
150 Felker St #D    http://www.LearnByDestroying.com 
Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com 
Skype: JeffLiebermann     AE6KS    831-336-2558

Sometimes when I'm looking at a file list, and I want to double-click on one file, the first click makes the whole list rearrange itself. I have to find the file again, and double-click again.

That probably varies with which file-view mode is being used.

Minor annoyance. Win 7 works pretty well.

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John Larkin         Highland Technology, Inc 
picosecond timing   precision measurement  

jlarkin att highlandtechnology dott com 
http://www.highlandtechnology.com

I'm using Win10 and I think I know what he's talking about. It's not the f ile list that I see jump, it's the folder hierarchy pane. I pop up an expl orer window and start opening folders on the hard drive in the left folder view pane. The the pane abruptly scrolls back to one of the default folder s that MS has set up for you as a "convenience" which I don't even use. Th ey don't appear in the folder view as being on the hard drive and function somewhat differently in my experience. So I always go through user/name/wh atever to find my personal files. I have folders on the hard drive root fo r business files. File explorer seems think you really mean to open one of the shortcut folders so the folders pane will push that on you *after* you have started working through the hard drive hierarchy.

Really? If MS can't even provide a decent file manager, it is time to swi tch to Linux for sure.

Yeah, if it were easy anyone could do it, right?

Rick C.

Kinda sounds like the file list is sorting by LastAccessTime and putting the most recently accessed file at the top or bottom of the list. However, I couldn't reproduce the problem on a virgin Win 7 machine.

LastAccessTime is disabled by default in Win 7 and up. Check anyway: Start -> Accessories -> Command Prompt -> Run as Administrator fsutil behavior query DisableLastAccess It should display: DisableLastAccess = 1

Do you have some kind of continuous background backup program running? Is Dropbox running on the directory when it file list gets shuffled?

Yep. Also try: Right-Click -> Sort By -> More and make sure that only Name, Date Modified, Type, and Size are checked. The list is huge and I haven't found which file property might be the culprit.

Please note that I'm guessing. Unless I can reproduce the problem, I can't test any potential fixes.

Agreed. I consider Win 7 the least disgusting of the available Windoze mutations.

--
Jeff Liebermann     jeffl@cruzio.com 
150 Felker St #D    http://www.LearnByDestroying.com 
Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com 
Skype: JeffLiebermann     AE6KS    831-336-2558

No, the file order doesn't change, still alphabetical order. The columns just jump horizontally and the cursor is no longer on the file that I clicked..

This being Windows, of course it's not consistent. It may depend on the explorer window size and number of files.

I have Dropbox (on my D drive), but this also happens in regular folder views on C.

I've sort of got used to it; I click once to see if it will jump, and then click twice.

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John Larkin         Highland Technology, Inc 

lunatic fringe electronics

I didn't catch the horizontal movement problem. I assumed it was vertical. I've never seen Win 7 do that and only have some really bad guesses as to what might be causing that. My best 2nd guess is that something is broken, either in the window manager or the mouse driver. I have seen the mouse jump around the screen and back for no obvious reason. Maybe try switching to a different mouse.

I did some Googling for similar problems and didn't find anything. I'll keep looking as time permits and let you know if I find anything useful.

--
Jeff Liebermann     jeffl@cruzio.com 
150 Felker St #D    http://www.LearnByDestroying.com 
Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com 
Skype: JeffLiebermann     AE6KS    831-336-2558

Thanks, but don't spend a lot of time on it. It's a minor annoyance.

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John Larkin         Highland Technology, Inc 

lunatic fringe electronics