VSL Studio Orchestral Strings expression map duplicate problem

Dorico
1

VSL Studio Orchestral Strings - Violins, Violas.zip (3.5 KB)

The expression maps for VSL Studio Orchestral Strings supplied by VSL seem to have a naming problem with duplicating a technique in an expression map. For all my other maps the name is automatically updated when duplicating and changing the technique. So what is causing this problem?

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Do you mean that when you duplicate one of the switches in the expression map, the new duplicate switch has the same name as the existing one? If so, that is at present the expected behaviour, across all expression maps.

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No, if you duplicate the switch the name stays the same but then you change this to another technique and it’s still the same name as before and not the new technique name. These are the only maps that have this, all my other maps work fine. So is there something wrong with those files? If so, VSL should provide some new maps.

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You’re correct about the behaviour. This is expected behaviour where somebody has set the name to something different on purpose (the “Name” field lets you override the automatic naming with an ‘override’ name). In this event it seems like even if you change the Name field back again to what it originally was at the beginning, it no longer automatically updates when the technique is changed to something else. So in other words, once you have changed the Name field setting in any way, it is now permanently disconnected from technique changes and you can’t “re-connect” it without either editing the XML or deleting the base switch and making a new one.

In VSL’s maps that you reference, all of the names appear to be overridden unnecessarily. For instance I found this:

				<playingTechniqueCombination>
					<baseSwitchID>6</baseSwitchID>
					<name>Marcato</name>
					<techniqueIDs>pt.marcato</techniqueIDs>

The name being hard set to “Marcato” gives it an overridden name and then this is getting retained even when the technique is changed.

If you edit the XML directly and remove the <name>Marcato</name> portion (and the similar portion from the other lines) and reimport this updated map, you should find that you can duplicate them without issue.

It isn’t a bug per se, but it points out an annoying feature that if you change the name field without knowing that you are giving it a permanent override, you can’t easily “reset” it back to being the automatic naming. I assume in this case that what most likely happened is either that VSL either made the map programmatically somehow by working with the XML directly and unnecessarily set the “name” element for everything; or, that they made it by hand and made the first technique where they wanted the name to be different from the default and changed the name on that, and then duplicated this first technique as a starting point (and its duplicates would also have a hard set name) in which case they would have to have changed not only the techniques of all the duplicates but the names as well.

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@mducharme Thanks for your investigation. This is the response from VSL:

“This override has not been done on purpose, but will not be “fixed”, because it doesn’t affect the functionality of the expression map.”

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As I said, it is easy enough to “fix” by exporting the expression map as an XML, editing that in a text editor, and reimporting. You probably want to make it a new map anyway if you are making your own customizations to it.

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