@jhh this reply touches both feature requests you posted on the forum:
and
This is exactly where I am heading to. The custom controls were made more generic in 5.0.0 and have been decoupled from the projects. It is possible now to create a custom control that can be reused in other projects. The idea is to make it similar to how we work with projects / presets. Users will be able to create and share custom controls (Lua knowledge required) and other users will be able to use them just by drag-n-drop as standard controls (no Lua knowledge needed). The AI assistant in the offline editor has been already trained to gain some skills in that area. But it needs more doing…
I have already made changes to the web application so that My Presets and Public Presets are now Workspace (users work area) and Library (shared stuff). On those pages you get access to Projects, Controls, and Surfaces.
The Controls tab is for working and sharing custom controls. What is missing is me writing a tutorial, providing examples, and extending the documentation. In short: a custom control can be developed by creating a reusable Lua package. The editor takes care of including it safely to other presets. That Lua package is ready to be later used by the “preloaded” mechanism we use for presets and Lua modules already.
For now, and on contrary to Projects, shared custom controls require my approval. I want to review how each custom control is implemented prior to being made public and possibly included in other users’ presets. I will try to do the review on timely basis and will drop that rule as soon as I see things are done right.
Once the custom controls is shared, users can see them Library:
The most notable function here is the “Add to my palette”. That allows users to add a selection of custom controls to their editor. What is on users’ palette gets displayed in the editor:
If a custom control uses only one value, it is assigned to the pot according to the slot it sits in. If it has multiple values, user who wants to use it must assign the values to the pots manually. The control set is determined by the placement of the top-right corner of the custom control:
That’s the functionality in nutshell. I did this because I genuinely believe it is the right way to address requests for additional envelopes, program change selectors, and various other controls that some users find useful but that would add unnecessary complexity to the editor for others. Also, we can use the power, time, and knowledge of the community without me being a bottleneck.
The detail window for custom controls is the next step. Your idea is more/less identical to what I want to do. I will add it when we can see that the shared custom controls work ok.
I will try to share more info and real-world examples of the custom controls and how to share there soon.