In my quest for total automation, I'm looking for the best practice for starting a chapter. In most books I produce, there is a chapter number, followed by a chapter title, sometimes then by a quote with a byline, and finally by a body-first (and then of course body, body, etc.)
My question is really about the best way to position the chapter number some distance down the page. Logically, I would use the chapter number paragraph style, and just set the Space Before to whatever I want, but Space Before is not honored if it's the first para in the text frame.
Also, I need to reflow the book now and then (the author is never quite done), so I want to have chapter titles on the same master page as the main text. As a result, I end up setting the frame baseline to LEADING, for the main text portion of the book. There seems no other obvious way to get the gap at the top (other than ways which would have to get fixed if the chapter moves around in the story).
A similar problem involves the running head on pages with chapter titles. I'd like to avoid manually reapplying the body master page whenever a chapter moves a few pages, and manually deleting the running head on all the pages where chapters start. That's not so bad the first time, but if revisions keep coming in, reflow keeps happening, and I end up repeatedly scanning for moved chapter title so I can fix them all by hand. It's an error-prone approach, and it seems an odd and obscure way to do something so common.
Finally (and somewhat unrelated), a tip that might be helpful to someone:
I use (in some books with long or odd chapter titles) what might be an odd technique for handling TOC entries. Instead of linking the TOC entries to the Chapter Title paragraph style, I create a new paragraph style called Hidden Chapter Title. I use red text, a very small font, and zero leading (with zero Space After). This comes just after the Paragraph Title.
This style allows me to edit a new chapter title that conforms to special TOC requirements (e.g., all short titles, or special encoded titles that differ from the chapter's title page). In some cases this is also used for the recto running head. Once the book is ready, I just set the Hidden Chapter Title color to None, and they disappear without affecting the flow.
Anyway, I would love to hear about other folks' approach to handling chapter title pages.
Thanks in advance,
Allen