Scenario:
- Our long books include many combinations of heads
- 1-heads, 2-heads, 3-heads by themselves followed by text
- Stacked heads, such as 1-heads followed by 2-heads and 3-heads followed by text
- Heads can be one line or multiple line
- Stacked heads have variable spacing above the group (depending on the combination of heads) so that the spacing between the last head and text is fixed and unchanging.
- We are particular about spacing being consistent between all heads and text.
- For single line heads by themselves, it's easy to control with space before/after and baseline grid settings in the paragraph styles
- Stacked heads seem to require multiple paragraph styles to get the desired result, but this is a nightmare to both create and use. For example, consider these combinations:
- 1-head, 2-head, and 3-head each by themselves, one line only
- 1-head with a 2-head
- 1-head two lines with a 2-head
- 1-head with a 2-head that has two lines
- 1-head two lines with a 2-head that has two lines
- Argh, a 1-head three lines with a 2-head one line with a three-head one line follwed by a 4-head that is two lines followed by a table, not text….
- Yes, this works, but its a nightmare… and try teaching it to a team of skilled layout artists who didn't build it.
- We expect the same behavior mid-page and at top of page
- Our books are 1,500 to 2,000 pages long and I'm fanatic about NOT modifying the primary text frames.
- We routinely have signiicant revisions to text, so I don't want to have to chase settings that are specific to location on page.
What I've tried and why it seems to fail
- The gazillion paragraph styles
- works well, but
- fails due to complexity, requires a style for every imaginagle combo even if it isn't used, and is difficult to train and use consistently
- Placing heads into an anchored text frame
- works as inline text above the text pargraph, but
- fails as it requires all combination heads be placed into separate frame, each anchored frame must be nudged to get correct space, and doesn't interact well with top of frame. Also, even when the anchored object is square in the center of the page enough nudging causes a pasteboard error — haven't figured that one out yet…
If I could just…
- Specify one paragraph style for each style of head
- Have variable spacing before the 1st head in a group (with a minimum required space)
- Have non-variable space between the last head in a group and the text that follows
- Have it work all the time, no matter where it occurs, and no matter how long each level of head is
How do you handle these situations? I'm confident there is a solution that is elegant and simple, I just haven't found it yet.
The right solution is worth milions of dollars (I'll submit the bill to my employer. Please ignore my other recent post about needing cheap solutions to layout situaitons.)
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