Will Kontakt8 see a return of the Wrench Icon for editing/scripting, Yes or No? Please tell us.

Don't hold your breath. My own approach is to look at the Walkthrough video. If there's no spanner, I don't buy it.

And if you believe this gobbledegook about a new secret GUI SDK you'll believe anything.

How terribly exciting.

But I'm a bear of very little brain. This has been given as the reason for locking Factory Library 2 to editing, i.e. losing the spanner. Can anyone explain? (Preferably without gobbledegook.)

take some more stuff out of the edit pages and put it into the hands of all users

For me that would be a poor compromise. Even instruments from the best libraries often need a tweak, duff individual samples, poorly programmed balance, randomising samplestart - the list is endless. And there has to b a pretty good reason for preventing you from using software that you actually own.

If you're interested I have devised a multiscript which can give you microtuning via the tune knob in the instrument header of a locked instrument. The knob is automated with cc#100, with the range (in the automation tab bottom window) set to 49.5-50.3, derived empirically. This example gives the Pure temperament in the key of E (declared $key = 4)

on init

 declare %ccval[12] :=(80,15,88,115,49,75,60,84,111,45,119,54)

 declare $key :=4

end on
on midi_in

 if ($MIDI_COMMAND = $MIDI_COMMAND_NOTE_ON)

  set_midi ($MIDI_CHANNEL, $MIDI_COMMAND_CC, 100, %ccval [($MIDI_BYTE_1-$key) mod 12])

 end if
end on

note: this stupid website puts arbitrary spaces between lines in the code format

Indeed - for the loyalty of the microtonal community the built in alternate tuning options that were there from my first Kontakt (v2) through v6 ought to be there. As noted above, for many people the only reason to buy Kontakt was that it handles alternate tunings superbly - I've played 106 notes per octave on my Linnstrument with the factory strings and it can be stunning - People who bought v7 thinking that it would do the same were bitter on the facebook microtonal communities. I have no reason to upgrade when the most important function I bought it for is gone. I still have v6 installed. I bought v7 and found the interface difficult. I'm not upgrading until the microtonal support returns.

I used to think Native Instruments was so enlightened to have built in quartertone, adaptive just intonation, freely adjustable notes per octave that treated the sample library correctly (unlike Garritan)

Its just sad to see this regression as microtonal music is becoming more mainstream (I.E. King Gizzard, etc.)

Its absurd to play the instruments of a non-12 equal cultural tradition in 12 equal.