Vienna Ensemble was designed from scratch to be running as a standalone application, alternatively as a network/local slave host. There are some certain considerations to be made if an application is intended to be controlled from a plugin window, one of the reasons is that various host applications tend to mess about with the Windows event handler in one way or another. This is why you won't see that many plugins utilizing keyboard commands. Running as a separate application we are not enforced to obey whatever rules the host sets up for us.

never mind

 Martin,

I don't see much of a priority to deal with the key focus issue in your last post if I read between the lines correctly.
A standalone version is all good for its own purpose, but when working with a host, you want to stay in that environment and don't want to be forced to click constantly between two apps not to mention the headache when you mess up one or the other app because you thought the key focus was in the other one.

A good workflow provides speed and that has a lot to do in my opinion with having your Key Commands customized and "flying through" the commands as a second nature. That however is extremely compromised when you have to constantly check what app is in focus before you hit a key.

I know, not many plug-ins use their own key commands and that is a good thing. It would create too much confusion. That confusion is already happening to some extend in Logic8 where you can have key commands performing different tasks depending what window inside Logic has the key focus.

Software developer give us amazing tools and  let us be creative in ways we couldn't even imagine a few years ago. But we as the grateful user have to make ourself heard when some developments seem to go into the wrong direction or going out of hand that will be counter productive in our creative process, i.e. messed up key focus and GUIs that force us to make unnecessary clicks over and over again.

And William,
it seems that you have a problem with "workflow". I hope it is just the word you don't like because I'm sure YOU have one in your work unless you work in utter chaos which is fine as long as it suits you.
I have no desire to use VE inside the DAW because it duplicates features that are already there in the DAW (Mixer) and just makes routing (Sends, Returns, Reverb plug-ins) more messy. But I have a desire of using the VI as a plug-in like any other plug-in inside the DAW as long as it doesn't interrupt my (yes you guessed it) workflow. The "outsourcing" of memory and CPU independent from the host is the right step as long as the GUI and Workflow (here we go again) doesn't suffer.

I worked many years with a configuration of one machine running the host (Logic) and three PCs running Gigastudio. Now I'm down to two 8-core MacPros, one running Logic as the main Sequencer and the slave machine running Logic as a playback Sampler that gives me the same firepower as the 3PCs.
I wished the technology of distributed processing and grid computing would move a little faster in the audio production world. The fragmentation of our production tools (Master and Slave computers) creates too many problems. Why would you build a mixing environment with 5 patched up Mackie mixers when you can run the same thing on a big 100+ channel mixing console where everything is centralized.
This is the direction were the developers should push it. But that is just my opinion

 There is one other major problem with key focus I want to point out.

In OSX there is always one app in the foreground, the one that is displayed in the menu bar. Let's say "Logic Pro" now all the key strokes apply to that app except the system key strokes or any other third party utilities (i.e. QuicKeys).
If I run VSL as a standalone app then I could switch between the two apps (Logic - VSL) for example using QuicKeys commands. The menu bar always gives me a visual feedback what app is in the foreground.

The VI pug-in however screws up the whole GUI concept. It operates still inside Logic Pro, so the menu bar doesn't switch and tells you that you are still operating in Logic Pro - but you are not. The GUI tells me that Logic is still in the foreground when actually VI is in the foreground without telling the GUI . It is living in this "GUI twilight zone". Excuse me for making the comparison, but this kind of GUI functionality could come straight from Microsoft. How this concept could pass the developing stage and considered to be acceptable is beyond me.

Doesn't Apple set strict guidelines regarding the GUI? Martin pointed out some technical reasons for making that decision, but they should have never settled  with that bad compromise. If a small scale garage based developer come up with something then it would be ok, but for such a big player with a big bucks product, I think we as the user can ask for a "... please, try harder!"

What worries me in the previous post from Martin is that it seems that they made that GUI decision and are somehow ok with it. No word about, "... sorry, but his is just a beta release and the next update will fix that ...".