I may have something to add to this. I have created a lot of custom instruments, mostly in the Woodwinds family, copies of the Treble Flute, with varying transpositions. I did not really know what was a Treble Flute, but the name suited me, my instruments, Galoubets and Flutets, are very high flutes with relatively small range (2 octaves at the extreme), and they are transposing instruments with a transposition between upward major ninth and one octave more above that. And the most used ones are at the top of this bracket. So I created a lot of them, and the idea was to set them as “Default”. My understanding of being “Default” is to be accessible for all projects against being one project scoped. To the current project (please correct me if I am wrong). I would also surmise that the Default custom instruments are stored in the userlibrary.xml file under AppData, and the others inside the project document, but I am not sure.
A problem is that in the Edit Instrument dialog the White Star button is very unsettling: except when it is disabled the ToolTip always show “Set as Default”! As a result, I was very confused about what should its state. II wonder if its misuse might cause damage. What it you toggle several times in succession? What if you have 2 projects, and you edit conflicting flags for the same instrument picker?
But until today, I never had any problem with finding one of my custom instruments in the instrument picker, apparently whether Default or not. And all my custom transposing instruments had been given the “Never Show Transposition” flag, I had chosen to include the transposition in the French name. But toady I decided to try and create a similar custom instrument as a variant instead as a copy, as an experiment (I have yet no idea how this would differ).
SO I decided to create a custom instrument, as a variant of Treble Flute again, with a transposition of 2 octaves upward, the name of Flutet, and the “Never Show Transposition” flag again. Then When I tried to add it to a new Player, I could never find it in the Woodwinds family in the selector, which brought me to this topic. I opened the library/instruments again, and there, I saw the entries
Flutet (C)
Flûte aiguë (B)
But thei respective picker names were
Flutet
Flûte aiguë
First the transposition was added to their picker names, but also the Treble Flute standard instrument had been renamed as a kind of collateral damage! Yet the “Flûte aiguë” can still be picked in the instrument selector, the name appearing in the list is “Flûte aiguë”, but if I highlight the item and copy the text, and paste in any text container, I see “Flûte aiguë B”! No parenthesis.
In summary, I have in the library instruments list (sorry, I am too lazy to make a nice excel table!) :
Name in list PickerName [Show Transposition] Star [Present in userlibrary] [Can be selected]
Flutet (C) Flutet Never W No No
Flûte aiguë (B) Flûte aiguë Never W Yes Yes
Galoubet en la Galoubet en la Never B Yes Yes
Galoubet en si Galoubet en si Never W Yes Yes
Which I can say I am at a loss to make sense of.
I will attach my userlibrary.xml file, it looks somewhat messed-up to me, it seems the Piccolos standard entry was also victim of collateral damage. At some time, I had experimented making another version of “Galoubet en si” as a copy of “Piccolo”. Nothing came out of it and I tried to delete it, and I guess the userlibrary shows the result, which is why I asked about the possibility of damage through misuse of the Edit Instruments ui interface. But also, what is new her, at lest for me, is choosing variant rather than copy, and could it be a factor?
Note also that the Star and Present in userlibrary columns are not consistent, contrary to what I surmised (present == (Star==’w’)) at the start of this text .
And sorry it as that verbose :-)!
Thanks, Craig, this confirms my misgivings about the misuse of the Set Default button, and it makes clear the result of using it both ways. Yet it would be nice to make this button a little more idiot proof , like changing the tool tip when the state changes. And it would also be nice if the help gave the same warning that you are now giving me.
Am i right in the idea that the userlibrary is the reference for the saved custom instruments, and applied over factory defaults stored somewhere else ? If yes, is there a “Reset to Factory” some where? I am just starting the finale to dorico migration, all that I did experimental, so I can consider starting from scratch.
I have already discovered, that variants would have been most appropriate for my family of transposing three holes flutes. Should I first make a copy, maybe form piccolo rather than treble flute, and then create variants from it, or directky create variants from piccolo? Also, I have browsed the D 5.1 - New Instrument Family Capabilities topic, whihc is now almost one year old, is there now a possibility, when creating a variant of Piccolo to have it inherit the sounds of a Piccolo? At the time it seemed to be a future possibility. Dor the moment I have managed to manually create a Playback Template that does at least what is needed for basic playback, but of course a built-in solution would preferred.
The userlibrary.xml file is indeed where custom instruments are saved. Sometimes the best way to undo something is to manually edit this file.
Variants will inherit the original instrument sound. New instruments will not. They will piano. It has already been requested that the ability to set the sound be added.
That is great news!
As for the saved custom instruments and the userlibraryfile, if I started by unsaving all my saved custom instruments, would no that restore the userlibrary to somesthing clean? This would surer that tampering with the file, though I must confess that in my past life as a developper I did tamper with a lot ot of xml resources :-)!
After a round in my projects, it seems cleaner that itwas before, but I still see what I call the collateral damage, like. Treble Flute changed to Flûte aiguë. And those items that look suspect to me happen to have a Reset button active! Maybe using would restore them to thei original definition?
Finally Reset does not have the hoped for effect. I want to start fresh with a variant not based on Treble Fkute anyway, and my best choice would be Piccolo, but now I have only a Piccolo (B) and I ma pretty sure there was a “vanilla” Piccolo initially. I deleted the Piccolo entry in the userlibrary and now I have a Piccolo (C) which I suppose was the initial state? It would be reassuring to have a reference version of the Factory instrument list!
So I created a new document from scratch, and before anything, I created a variant of Piccolo, just transposing one octave higher, with Galoubet as the Picker name and the fullname, and with the proper range . It appears in the list as Galoubet (C)… but the star button is already white! I never clicked it! Does it mean that it was automatically saved or what?In ant case, it did not appear in the userlibrary. I did not touch it, I tried to create a Reader and attach this variant to it, and indeed it does not appear in the selector!
Please advise (well, tomorrow, today was Sunday anyway, though you were on the breach :-))
A white (filled) star means it’s saved as default, so it should be usable in any new document.
I admit I don’t know much more about the instrument editor, it is quite new and its behavior has already puzzled me… I’ll let someone more knowledgeable on this matter answer more accurately!
Well it is interesting because I opened a new Project and the new variant cannot see it. So I think there might be problems with the appearance of the star button: after all it is already a little weird that the tooltip always show “Set as Default” whether it was saved or not . But I am glad you tell me I am not the only one puzzled ! So let us wait for an expert. I think it might only be a problem with the display feedback. Thank you all for answering a sunday!
Still, I am pretty sure that white star means unsaved and black star means saved, I toggled the saved status on my Galoubet (C) custom variant and checked both the availability in a new project and the contents of the userlibrary file. And in the “puzzling” area, in the project where I created Galoubet (C) as a variant of Piccolo (C), this instrument suddenly appeared in the list with a new name Piccolo (C Sounds 8va). Isnt’it a little unsettling that creating a variant of a factory instrument would change the name of the factory one?
This makes me wonder whether, to create another variant, such as Galoubet(B), I should start again from Piccolo or from Galoubet(C) ?
I can’t believe it (though I was starting to wonder about it, in the “Oh no, it couldn’t be that” style )! I cannot stand dark backgrounds, so the first thing I did was switch to light! But first any doc or help should say solid and outline, not black and white, second if the tool tip said “Set as Default” or “Reset to Default” there woujd not be any doubts. Pleaaaaase fix the tool tip and make the doc clear. Not for my sake, now that I know about it I can stand it , the time it cost me is in the past. For the rest I am pretty satisfied, I have some questions on the use of such custom variants in Project Templates, but tha will be for another topic !
You probably also noticed that the instrument editor works best if none of the instruments you are working on is in the score. If it is in the score the editing options are limited and I am not sure if any changes you make will become globally available even if the star is activated.
Regrading percussion instruments, creating variants will lead to some confusion in the percussion map editor as for some reason it does not show the full instrument name including the variant number. So you will see e.g. three tom (high) entries in your instrument list in the PM editor if you created two variants. The order is not always logical (i.e. default, 1,2 )
What I had also noticed ,but it may have been fixed now, is that your user added instrument turns up in the list when you want to add an instrument to a player but not in the list you see when you want to change an instrument.
The editor seems to be still WIP but it has already improved a lot.
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, like changing the tool tip when the state changes. And it would also be nice if the help gave the same warning that you are now giving me.