I believe the following enhancements would make the Generic Surface plugin even more useful and easier to use:
- Double the amount of ACT controls available for a given context. Currently there is a maximum of 16 spots available. This means I can only use half the controls on my control surface, which has 8 sliders and 24 rotary encoders
- The ability to remove control assignments for a given plugin. Currently, it seems the only way to unmap these assignments is by editing the underlying XML files
- Greater editing flexibility of ACT assignments. Currently, the only way to assign a physical control to a plugin's parameters is clicking the parameter and using ACT Learn. In the lower half of the Generic Surface window, where the plugin mappings are displayed for the current context, it would be great if the displayed parameter next to each physical control was a drop-down menu where the user could simply change which parameter is to be associated with that control, including an option for "none." For example, an EQ plugin has focus. In the Generic Surface window, next to control #3 in the ACT section, there's a drop-down menu. Clicking it, I get to see all available parameters -- band 1 freq, band 1 Q, output gain, bypass, etc -- for the plugin.
- A way to clear all mappings for the plugin currently in context. While the auto-mapping that takes place can sometimes be helpful, other times it just creates even more manual work if you don't like the default assignments and have to edit all of them one by one. Sometimes I just want a blank slate.
- A clean, simple librarian view showing all hardware surfaces in one column, the associated plugins for the selected surface in another column, and the assignments for the selected plugin in another column. Here, users could un-learn mappings, delete associations between surfaces and plugins, clearly see exactly what has been learned, backup, import and export maps, etc. I'm thinking something similar to the revamped Plugin Manager we got a few versions ago