Focus Set

Added 17 Jul 2009 (last updated 04 Sep 2009)

For use with Sibelius 5 and Sibelius 6

This is a set of plugins that let you create, save, and apply groups of staves (focus sets) that can be applied to a score to cause it to display those staves in View > Focus On Staves.

You can create custom groups of staves for specific scores. You need to set up the groups for each score you work on, but you can group any staves you want.

Use the plugin Focus Set to create, save, and apply your focus sets. Use Clone Focus Set if you have a number of scores with the same instrumentation. You can set up focus sets for one score, and use Clone Focus Sets to copy the settings into another score.

Focus Set 1, Focus Set 2, .. Focus Set 10, can be assigned to keystroke shortcuts. Focus Set 1 will apply the first focus set in the list of sets, Focus Set 2 runs the second (regardless of the names). These plugins run with no dialogs.

It is recommended that these plugins be installed into a separate user Plugins subfolder (e.g., Focus Set). A PDF help document is included in the zip file.

Updated 21 July 2009 to improve error handling.

Updated 4 September 2009. Clone Focus Set plugin was updated because it would fail with focus sets created by the July update. The plugins should now automatically stay in sync.

• Download FocusSet.zip (188K, downloaded 379 times)

Plug-in written by Bob Zawalich.

Focus Families

Added 17 Jul 2009 (last updated 17 Jul 2009)

For use with Sibelius 5 and Sibelius 6

The Focus Families plugins let you display, in Focus On Staves, instruments contained in one or more families of instruments. The families are predefined by Sibelius and are: "Brass", "Exotic", "Fretted", "Keyboard", "Other", "Pitched Percussion", "Singers", "Strings", "Unpitched", and "Wind".

Use Focus Families (and its 2 clones, Focus Families 1 and Focus Families 2) to display multiple instrument families. These plugins bring up a dialog, at least the first time run in a session, and save their settings across Sibelius sessions.

There is also a set of plugins that will display one family of instruments. These have no dialog, and are meant to be assigned to shortcut keys. They are Focus Brass, Focus Exotic, Focus Fretted, Focus Keyboard, Focus Other, Focus Pitched Percussion, Focus Singers, Focus Strings, Focus Unpitched, and Focus Wind.

All instruments are in one family only. So for example, though you can find a Harp in Create > Instruments in both the Strings and Pitched Percussion families, the plugin will always place a harp in Pitched Percussion.

While these plugins are less customizable than the Focus Set plugins, they do not require setup for each score, and so can be mixed and matched with the Focus Set plugins.

It is recommended that these plugins be installed into a separate user Plugins subfolder (e.g., Focus Families). A PDF help document is included in the zip file.

• Download FocusFamilies.zip (180K, downloaded 586 times)

Plug-in written by Bob Zawalich.