Simile v4.3 -- problems and workarounds

Hello everyone,

We have discovered some serious problems with Simile v4.3 :oops: We shall correct these in a new version to be released as soon as possible, but in the mean time here is a list of the problems encountered and some workarounds.

Most seriously, we found that if using v4.3 on a Windows XP machine, Simile appears to hang when you attempt to bring up the equation dialogue for a component with exactly three parameters (typically one with three influence arrows connected to it). This is due to a problem with the graphical toolkit used by Simile. If this happens to you, you can get Simile back like this:

1: Minimize the Simile desktop window
2: Restore it by clicking on its tab in the taskbar -- you will now see a flickering equation dialogue in front of it
3: Eiter 'cancel' this dialogue, or if possible drag its border, which should cause it to become stable, after which you can use it to edit the equation as normal.

To stop this problem occurring, you can instead edit the equation in the equation bar -- this appears when you single click on the component. Alternatively, avoid having exactly three parameters for any component!

In the course of working around this, we found two other problems:
1: Simile 4.3 has a different format for the 'table(...)' function; the argument(s) are no longer enclosed in square brackets to form a list. Unfortunately this means that if you save a model using the table(...) function from v4.3, it will not open properly in earlier versions. Worse, if you edit and save it with an earlier version, the result will fail to open at all in version 4.3. Workaround: if you open a v4.3 model in an earlier version, search for all equations including the table(...) function (The 'find' facility allows you to do this) and manually enclose its argument(s) in square brackets.e.g., table(int(time())) becomes table([int(time())])

2: If you restore a model from the log file after losing Simile, then edit it some more, then lose Simile again, it will not be possible to restore the model from the resulting log file. The workaround is to always save the model after restoring it from the log file. This starts a new log file, which will restore properly if it is needed.

Sorry about these problems -- they'll be fixed soon
--Jasper