The accuracy of effective chiral lagrangians with vector-mesons as (hi
dden symmetry) gauge fields is shown to be improved by including SU(3)
-breaking in the vector-meson sector. The masses (M(v)), couplings to
the photon field (f(vy)) and pseudoscalar pairs (gVPP) are all consist
ently described in terms of two parameters, which also fit the values
for the pseudoscalar decay-constants, f(p), and charge radii, (r(p)(2)
). The description of the latter is further improved when working in t
he context of chiral perturbation theory.