Just to balance out perspectives here (and companies like Steinberg do listen to and consider many different perspective).
One of my favorite things about Halion is that “I” get to design the UI. I don’t have to conform to someone else’s cheesy work flow ideas. It’s a power user’s dream, in that I can design a UI that spreads across three monitors and shows tons of information in a single window, or I can make a very simple single instrument 600x400 UI that only shows the ‘tactile’ basics. I can make it ‘visually’ appealing with lots of pretty graphics, or I can make it look like a power user’s binary data tank. I can split, drag, pop-out windows and frames and make it MY UI.
I’ve no problem seeing waveforms and such in the Cubase/Halion Media Browser. While icons and such would indeed be nice for some users to have in the relational database (and not that difficult to add at some point), I’d personally elect NOT to use those features for my own projects if given the choice. I’d rather not have a 4meg bitmap image taking up space on my relatively expensive SSD media when text gets the job done just as well (and is fully searchable). I’d rather NOT have a window or dialog take up massive amounts of screen real estate (I use three screens, and it’s still not enough). I’m seriously buggered by the ‘progressive RACE’ to make things so ‘user friendly’ that we can’t just hit a key combo and type in three letters to find what we need anymore. I’d much rather spend an afternoon reading a manual than many minutes every single day scrolling windows that take up too much screen real estate looking for ‘image based visual cues’. I’ve no problem with a db that ‘supports’ tagging with images and icons…but if it’s forced on me, and if I lose power searching functions and ‘documentation’ in the process…I’ll be pretty upset.
Case in point…Opera Browser with Prestige and earlier engines was a total JOY to use. Not only was it the leanest and fastest browser out there…it had all the best POWER USER features in one simple installation, under ONE user agreement/contract. Now it’s a one tab, third party ‘plugin’ nightmare that needs far more resources to install and use, is arguably less secure, and ‘relies’ on third party ‘plugins’ to get a single ‘power user’ ability. Push-centric…app-store…crap. I hope Halion doesn’t attempt to do the same sort of ‘user/consumer’ friendly thing. I want Steinberg’s tools to be a PRODUCER of content…not so much to be a ‘consumer’.
I’ve had ‘third party libraries’ for various products, including Kontakt, ARIA, etc…which can be a pain in the rear to install and get working. The ‘library’ wasn’t built correctly or was poorly documented, etc. It wasn’t the fault of NI, or Plogue that someone put a garbage library out, and was too lazy to make and test an installer for it.
I’m far from a ‘programmer’, and my so called IQ and ‘education level’ is actually on record as being ‘quite low’, but I have no problem making an installer for Halion content that extracts things to a sub directory of one of the default directories holding factory Halion content. I can even make it put the content on any ‘removable’ device I want and implement plug and play scripts that’ll drop file-system links into these default directories ‘as needed’. It’s really not that difficult to do with free multi-platform installer tools.
If I were going to sell or otherwise mass distribute a library for Halion 5, I’d take the time to get advice here on the forums, and also contact the Halion Dev team (providing samples of my Library) to see how they recommend packaging and distributing it so end users will not face the installation problem you’ve described. It’s really not that hard to get the information and support required.
There’s a point where I’d rather not pay a premium for ‘rebadged tools’ (such as basic archivers and extractors) we’ve all bought, paid for, and had at our disposal for decades. If Steinberg decides to either develop and service their own, or pay the royalties to rebadge and bundle some other company’s installer tools, then the total cost of the product goes up (even for users who have no intention of packaging and selling their libraries). The more of that kind of stuff a sound engine developer packs into a product, the more resources they must dedicate to supporting and maintaining them…across all of the wild and wacky ‘OS related’ standard changes that seem to come every few months from the likes of Microsoft and Apple.
I believe that Halion 6 is highly likely to include more of the power tools that third party content developers have been asking for. Perhaps it’s been a ‘long time coming’, but it’s not due to a lack of effort and dedication from the “Halion Team”. I’m eager to see what direction it all goes. It’ll be interesting to see how they manage the pressure to copy cat the dumbed down ‘consumer driven’, subscription based rapid prototyping and app-store models, vs keeping a solid focus on providing power user ‘production tools’ for ‘producers’ to ‘create with’.
I’m cool with user friendly. I just don’t want to lose, ‘user choice’, and ‘power’. I’m also getting frustrated with being forced to pay multiple times over for technologies we’ve already paid for and mastered many times over as general personal computer users (such as reading a REAL product manual, then making a simple self extracting archive/installer with a few user options on launch). I get pretty tired of paying twice as much for a bundle of tools we’ve already got, or running into brick walls in apps that point us to ‘third party app stores’ demanding ‘cloud based subscriptions’ to get anything done.