Installation instructions and terms of use are available on the download page.

System Requirements
PC or Mac with Finale 97/98 or Finale 2000/2001/2002 installed.

Description

The JW Push Staves plug-in is designed to provide a fast and easy-to-use interface to move staves vertically within a staff system. It can be a real time-saver, specially when working with optimized scores. The most useful purpose is probably to expand or shrink a gap between 2 instruments in a score.

Options

Instruments: Lists all available instruments (=staves) in the current document. Hidden instruments will have the word (hidden) as a suffix.

Above/Below/All/None: Use these push buttons to quickly select a range of instruments.
The behavior of the Above and Below push buttons are based on the instrument you last clicked on in the list. You don't need to do a new selection in the instrument list just to change from Below to Above, for example.

Staff systems to affect: The list can contain any of these types:
Optimized Staff System - This type will be available if any of your staff system has been optimized.
Global Staff Set - This type will always be available. The Global Staff Set is used for the default scroll view (View/Select Staff Set/All staves) as well as for all unoptimized staff systems in page view.
Staff Set #x - (x can be any value between 1 to 8.) Any user-defined staff set, available in View/Select Staff Set. The list will only display the available user-defined staff sets.

Automatically Update Layout: Select this option if you want to make an automatic Update Layout of the document after the move has been made. [From version 1.02 of the JW Push Staves plug-in, the decision of whether update is needed or not is made automatically based on the contents of the document and the selected choice in Staff systems to affect.]

Push...: Enter the distance you want to move the selected instruments. Negative values will move downwards, positive values upwards.
If you're using a measurement unit other than EVPUs, you'll notice that the values sometimes have strange decimal values. This is due to the fact that everything is converted from EVPUs; working with EVPUs will not show any decimal digits.

Optimized staff systems: Select the optimized staff systems range where the move should be applied. If you have selected a measure range with the mass mover before selecting the plug-in, that range will be converted to a staff system range and automatically filled-in. If there are non-optimized staff systems within this range, they will not be affected when running the plug-in.

Smart filter: This option will force the plug-in to only process an optimized staff system as long as there are both "selected" and "non-selected" instruments in that staff system. This option is used to avoid moving instrumental parts when all non-selected instruments removed due to optimization, which would result in just making the whole staff system larger or smaller (without any gap change). If you select all instruments in the list, this option will be disabled.

Tips

* You can also make nonconsecutive range selections. Just use the Ctrl and Shift keys in the instrument list as you normally do with multi-item selections.

* If you work with optimized systems, you can get an almost fully automatic work-flow by first selecting the staff system range and the instruments you want to move with the Mass Mover tool. When you open the option dialog box with a selected range, the staff system range and the instrument list will be automatically filled-in.

* A very useful way of using JW Push Staves is to create extra gaps between instrument groups in a full score.

How to...

Some examples to get you started.

To insert an extra vertical space between instrument groups

1. Select the first instrument placed below the wanted extra space.
2. Click the Below push button.
3. Select what type of staves you want to affect in the Staff systems to affect list. In an optimized score, you typically select Optimized Staff Systems.
4. Enter a negative distance value in the Push... entry field.
5. [Optimized systems only] Select the All staff systems radio button to affect the whole document.
6. [Optimized systems only] If there is any risk of having all the instruments above the gap optimized away, you should make sure that the Smart filter option is selected.
7. Press the OK push button.

To move all instruments except one in the middle

1. Press the All push button.
2. Click on the instrument you don't want to move while holding the Ctrl key down.
3. Modify the other settings if needed.
4. Press the OK push button.

Technical

PC:

Filename:
jwpushstaves.fxt [on Finale 97/98]
jwpushstaves2000.fxt [on Finale 2000]

Entry in registry: Software\JWPlugins\JWPushStaves101 (in HKEY_CURRENT_USER)

Mac:

Filename:
JW Push Staves [on Finale 97/98]
JW Push Staves 2k [on Finale 2000]

User Preferences resource: 'JWPS' in JW Plug-ins (located in the Program Settings folder)