[time-nuts] Spectrum Software Micro-Cap downloads

[Andy]

Rick Karlquist wrote, about LTspice:

My take on this is completely different.  The only "active development"
> consists of adding devices.


Very much not true.  Bugs have been continually fixed, and improvements
added, though many were not on a grand scale.

  The tool has only been updated in 2004
> ("version IV" ) and 2017 (version XVII) or something like that.


Totally false.

Major changes happened in 2008 and in 2016.  Minor changes happened
sometimes daily or weekly, as needed.  I guess you weren't looking.  :-)

  The
> clever Roman numeral designation makes it look like there have been
> 17 updates.


IMO, I wouldn't call it clever, I might call it stupid, using XVII to mean
2017 (released in late 2016, like the auto industry).  It was not done to
create any sort of false sense that there were 12 un-released major
versions.  I wish they had called it version V, but we can't change that
now.

  The last update finally added group delay.


Wrong.  Group delay had been there for ages and ages, if not forever.  I
first used LTspice in 2000s and group delay was there already.

The change from IV to XVII added 64-bit engine, multi-monitor support,
changed some parts of the GUI, and added support for Unicode.  The latter
was a mistake in my opinion (as an English-speaking engineer), but I think
it was a big benefit to users in non-English-speaking countries.

  It didn't
> fix any of the other well known problems having to do with data
> plotting, AFAIK.
>

Wrong again.

Not everyone has to like it.  But many improvements have been continually
added.

Micro-cap has many devoted users too, and features LTspice doesn't have.
And now it's free.  (And has been updated at least twice since it became
free.)


Lloyd Blythen wrote:

... it's under active development, AD supports it very
> well, ...


That is somewhat debatable right now.  But it's hopefully improving.

Regards,
Andy