Proactive development is a core principle at Implied Logic.
As the STEM user base expands
and the volume of support activity increases, inevitably some of this
traffic leads to requests for new software features, cosmetic improvements
and the occasional obscure bug-fix. Our clients often expect us to think of solutions
before they even tell us there is a problem! So we are our most
candid and knowing critics and are certainly the most prolific contributors to our
development roadmap.
In the three months since STEM 7.3b was released in May 2013, we have responded
to and fixed a number of minor irritations in the software (which have been patched
to individual, affected customers) and made a number of incremental enhancements
to existing features.
There is no single compelling issue which warrants an update, but there is much
to be gained from everyone adopting a common system which includes all these fixes.
Most obviously it ensures consistency and reduces the risk of anyone else being
compromised by any of these issues going forward; more subtly it saves time and
avoids frustration if someone with one of the existing patches has to re-install
everything on a new machine.
So we have produced a STEM 7.3c maintenance release
which is now available as a recommended update for
all current STEM users. 15+ minor improvements and corrections are listed
in the release notes, with some
highlights as follows:
- an optional out-of-process component has been added to enable the STEM add-in for
Excel to work with 64-bit Office
- STEM will now attempt to remedy automatically any soft licence
issue triggered by an (apparent) change in the local hardware configuration before
flagging an error
- the Cost Period input for a resource, new in STEM
7.3, was not scaling the Usage Cost input (only)
as it should, and this is now rectified
- a generated eSTEM web interface now accommodates three separate
style sheets: one which is hard-coded for all models, one model-specific
file, and an optional user style-sheet which may be added by the modeller to override
the other two
- the updating and recalculation of formulae has been
optimised in the Editor.
As you would expect (and except where directly notified to the contrary due to ongoing
investigation), STEM 7.3c includes all patches
issued since the original STEM 7.3 and subsequent
7.3a and 7.3b
maintenance releases.
Note: for compatibility with any future patches, it is essential to replace any
previous patches or provisional release candidates with this official STEM version
7.3c.