Preset browser ability

[p0nce]

More desirable than host presets because:

• everybody does it
• it looks better
• many people don't find the host presets
• Some hosts don't even see VST3 external presets

EDIT: BUT it seem to cause a lot of issues when the files are external, with regards to the proper location in macOS HDD.

EDIT: also preset fiels in a macOS bundle break code signatures when installed on top of each others.

[p0nce]

There are hard dependencies before removing host presets and providing internal presets, which is that:

• All UIs must be updated to add a preset browser (ideally not the same for everyone). Not the hardest thing.
• design a preset format, i guess based on XML or something (think tags, categories, etc...)
• then there is the whole save/load of preset business, for now plugins where one file but we need to know the right directories. Hosts do load/save this instead of Dplug currently.

Then it's possible to remove host presets. If we keep host presets, then we are at the mercy of how presets work in VST (changing settings change the bank, fixed number of presets by bank).

[p0nce]

Additional reasons for having internal presets:

• VST2 presets requires two types of chunks ("bank chunk" and "preset chunk") that aren't used by other plugin formats
• AAX presets are extracted from runtime with library loading, however bitness of the build system must be the same as the plug-in. This sort of coupling hints that preset data should not be only available at runtime, and should be more lie plugin.json.

[p0nce]

Presets should be accessible by build steps so outside of binaries in general. Also a human-readable format would be best.

[p0nce]

Blocked by #96

[p0nce]

I think we can create a preset format to make things easier before changing anything related to chunks and such.

[0xEAB]

many people don't find the host presets

some hosts do even a good job at hiding them ;)

i guess based on XML

How about SDLang/JSON/CSV? Perhaps one of these formats would be easier to deal with (and make a smaller binary).

[p0nce]

Well not SDLang, but yeah anything is on the list

[p0nce]

Actually having plugin own format for preset is not that desirable, it creates lots of problem on macOS for competitors that want to save files, lots of problems for installers... I think it's better to tick to host-provided preset facilities for now. No one has asked to be able to save presets with Auburn plugins, because the host allow it anyway.

What is missing though is a preset browser, or at least the ability to make such a widget.

[p0nce]

That ability would probably just need to set all parameters from a widget.

[p0nce]

That's what OT SIMIAN is doing => https://punklabs.com/ot-simian No external presets exposed