Hello everyone in Rackland, everybody knows the trouble when opening an old patch, that some modules are missing. I know that it is possible to edit the responding file with a text editor, but that can be a lot of work. How nice would it be, if we had an editor which lists the modules of the patch and allows changes. I am no programmer, so I don’t know if this is possible. What do you think?
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Isn’t the format JSON or something? there are editors for that, I guess.
VCV Rack itself will tell you which modules are missing, and allows editing of a patch. What functionality would you want in an external patch editor that isn’t offered by Rack itself?
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Once the patch is opened in VCV Rack you will have lost the patch-cable configuration.
I think Norbert is looking for an elegant solution that allows editing the json file, through means of search and replace, maybe together with some visual aspects, dunno?
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Like I wrote before, I know that a patch can be edited with a text editor. I had something in mind like a data base query which lists all used modules and allows to replace one by another through a GUI. I think Latif understands me…
Replacing modules is not going to be easy since different modules have different port configuration.
Building off Adam’s question, what doesn’t work with the current process of opening a patch and then rebuilding the missing parts?
The one thing that I can think of is in the current workflow you don’t know what you lost. So one idea would be making a “missing module” that is just a wall of ports and swap that in for the missing module, so you still have all the cables and can work on remapping them. It could maybe store the name of the missing module in a text field so you know what your replacing. But even then you wont know which port is which.
As you note, “replacing” a module would have to be a very manual process. I don’t see how it would be generally possible using an external tool. The patch file format does not store which port is which, just that: “port #4, module #13 is connected to port #9, module #2”. I think your “missing module” idea would be the only hope of solving this problem. At least then someone could guess what the replacement module could be based on the context of the rest of the patch.
I just had the same idea, with a “Dummy module”,
and the cables could give a hint to the ports by just seeing where they come from.
This seems like a feasible idea, although now without some difficulty.
With the module missing; rack has no idea how wide it should be, but more importantly it has no idea where the ports go. So you would be relying on the slug (not the name) of the module and the numbers of the ports. Not much of a visual clue from the layout. Not ideal, but perhaps of some help.