LADSPA Title uses the plugs Label not Name field

I just noticed that the plugin selector displays LADSPA Label field instead of LADSPA Name field in plugin selector.

So instead of displaying “Feedback Delay (Max. 5s)” it displays “fbdelay_5s”.

Programs should use the Name field.

We first have tried using the name field which ended up in massive names which didnt fit into our tiny fx selection box. Many plugs use the name field more like a description field, so the label seemed more comfortable for us.

Well, you can trim it if it gets too long and display it in tooltip maybe? But either way, the label field is not actually even supposed to be anything meaningful, and in some cases it isn’t. It is meant for internal use and in most cases not helpful for the user.

The LADSPA plugins actually rarely have names compared to VST plugins. It is more like in a toolbox ideology. You don’t call tools in your toolbox Mike, Jack, John. Instead you say crosshead screwdriver, 10 unit spanner, 8 unit spanner. Etc.

Can’t you just use the filename, just like with vst .dll’s? As an option at least?

Filenames don’t make any sense. :) LADSPA plugins often are packed like 100 plugins in one file. For example cmt.so packs quite many plugins.

On further inspection LADSPA specification states that you can use filename+label combo as unique identifier for a plugin. For example: “cmt.so:lpf”. But this is not very friendly approach either to display them in selection. Right now I have some plugins with duplicate labels installed and some with totally meaningless labels, like “aaa1”. :D

Right now it’s almost impossible to find the right plugins as I have several hundred of them installed.

If not more, the Name field should atleast be searchable through the search function. Name also displayed in tooltip and filename:label combo displayed in selection box.

We use the dllname:label to identify the plugins internally (when saving/loading songs for example), so thats a different problem (well, thats not a problem).
And even when using the display name instead of the label you will end up in duplicate entries. I have at least some here. This happens when the same plugs are packed in different dlls.

Here is how it looks like when using the name instead of the label:
270 Ladspa.jpg

OK, we could allow the FX list to be sized even more, but why should we if the label works? In all cases I’ve seen here the label is an abbreviation of the display name, so we decided to use this one instead. This is also important for the mixer, where we do not have much place for the names (as neurotix said).

Also you still can see the full name when clicking on the small ? info button in Renoise.

I dont really care whatever name we choose, as soon as we can agree on something. Another alternative would be to use the short names in the list, then showing the “real” name in the device chain (when instantiating the plug)…

Well, you should atleast display filename:label combo. For example I have 4 “amp”'s in my plugin list right now. Only one of them is a guitar amp simulator, others are different kind of digital amplifiers. I just have to try through all of them to find the right one.

Also when searching for “tube amp” doesn’t give me any results.

But using trimmed name and a tooltip seems good enough solution for me.

271 tooltip.png

Really, the screenshot Tiktak just provided is very nice. As long as the search works on the whole title and if you could see the full name in tooltip.

Using the label in mixer might work. I don’t mind it there. Cause it’s unlikely people will put all the 4 amps in there. And you probably know which plugins you have put in the rack, you don’t have to search from there anymore.

In a plugin add window you often have to search plugins when you have several hundred of them. Cause you are not sure which one exactly you may want.

The tooltip is usually assigned to a whole gui component (like the whole list) and not just one element.
I don’t doubt it could be done, but would probably mean a lot of work to add this just for the Linux edition.
I would then instead just vote for the full name and a scrollbar on the bottom so you can scroll to the right and read the full thing. At least this is something that can probably be arranged very quickly.

Yeah I noticed that tooltips work like this. But I don’t think it’s too much work. If nothing else, you can just change the tooltip text display for the plugin select widget. And redisplay it.

Also I don’t think it could be useful only for Linux. Other operating systems may also have plugins with long names.

Either way I have said what I think. I won’t do more “long title” propaganda in this thread. :)

BTW: Ardour displays plugins in the mixer like this:

272 ardour.png

Moved to the discusion forum as this obviously needs discussion.

Would be great to hear some more opinions about this. I personally like the short labels, for Neurotix it seems to be alright, Suva doesn’t want them, so?

I re-read this thread having spent some time recently using some ladspa plugins, in my opinion the short label just doesn’t cut it, due to the total lack of info in many of them. Loading them up to check the [?] tooltip isn’t really viable when you know the type of effect you want and have no idea what it’s called.

Taktic’s screenshot with the full names looks much better to me, even if they don’t all fit in at least they give me some idea what the plugin is about. vV’s suggestion of a horizontal scrollbar would seem a fairly straightforward solution to me (I could be wrong though).

Whatever the final solution, I definitely vote for full names, not short labels. Keep up the good work taktic :)

Yeah, have to agree. I have been using renoise for a while now, and the LADSPA FX short names are really disturbing. Like looking for a compressor I would normally search for “compressor” and select the most suitable one of those, but now it doesn’t give any results, instead I should search for “compress”, “comp”; “cmp”, “cprsr” and “c”. Same with all other types of FX. If you don’t know all the plugins by heart this is very bad practice.

i noticed this when i made some tunes in linux version using the mdaplugs, and tried to bring the same tunes over to osx version with the mdaplugs already installed.

osx version went nuts at the same time, which could be merely coincidence.
however it is curious as it’s the same plugins only compiled with different names. like “such and such” & “such_and_such” & “suchandsuch”
whih is understandable since most the ladspa is done just to see if they actually will work! i will understand interoperability is non-existent. -yet-

Hmm, that’s good idea… That you can apply aliases to the names. Like in MSN contact list. MSN buddies often have names like: “SomeChickFromFinland: Hanging out or possibly not hanging out but being too lazy to change my name back to what it was (L) (K) (A) LOL OMG”. So you just apply alias to them.

Also, it could be just option in settings: “Show full LADSPA plugin name”.

But yeah: +5 for the alias.

option to rename dsp plugs would rule on either platform, just right click and rename. Finito.

I’ve added an option to show the long names instead of the short names in the plug browsers. The “long” names are the default.

While I was at this: VST plugins will now show the manufactor name as prefix when the long name option is enabled.

Guess this should make everyone happy, or?