Hehe, a familiar and historical discussion about transitions. This one's done the rounds a few times.
I'll add to this the importance, so far ignored by most sample developers, of the advantages of recording desks for strings. If we are to have a terabytes worth of samples, labouring to cover a mountain of transitional states, then this should (and should have been) done by desk for strings, to add a further possibility of realism.
A former orchestral player, now full time composer,
Alex.
p.s. Still waiting for the Linuxsampler "26 hour a day" plugin....