Composite Components?

it's not been presented excactly as you laid it out, but various other forms have. there are a number of threads on 'grouped components' and 'snippets' and their uses.

you can already do some of what you're asking for. in any given filter, select a group of them and right click and pick 'copy'. exit the filter and open another or create a new one. right click in that filter and select 'paste' and your entire group will be pasted into the workspace.

well, effectively, any group of components can be considered as one component and can be created in or moved to any other filter for use and it will still operate the same way. thus, effectively, it's one component.

but i know what you're getting at. and yes, it's a good idea. it would be like having a sort of library of snippets, premade and existing in our components list as a single entity and extended just a bit, would show up in the workspace as a single component. and yes, that could be quite handy.

the downside is, it could also get quite messy and i cant even imagine the coding nightmare to do this. imagine taking just something simple like a refraction snippet that used perlin noise, refraction, image and blend. hmmm,... you'd only need two input nodes and one output. so, that wouldnt be too hard. you'd have to break down all the sliders within a given component into data objects (if they arent already) and re-combine them and reconstruct the component base.

so, if the internal codes/data structure of any given component is already broken down like this on an individual basis, maybe you could do it. interesting.

the other messy part might be in keeping a sane organization of all these new components. imagine adding 50 new components to your components list. it would be almost easier to just build a new group rather than having to find that one you'd built a year ago and saved.

still, an interesting idea.

(p.s. dont mind me, i'm just thinking out loud )