Anchored Objects with text wrap, need vertical space

Question

Hi.  I'm a fairly new InDesign user and have just this past week learned about anchored objects, threading text frames, numbered lists, and some other fun options. So far InDesign has done most everything I need fairly elegantly. However, I have not been able solve one issue.
In my book I have numerous pages that have this issue; I'll just describe one case. On this page there are 4 graphics running down the right side of the page. These are not anchored graphics. They do have text wrap defined on the left side and bottom. There is text that wraps lovely on the left.
Each of these four graphics has a specific paragraph it needs to top align with. However, the text it aligns with may not take up as much vertical space as the graphic does. When I anchor each graphic with the paragraph it needs to align with, the four graphics overlap each other.
At the moment, to make it look right, I have placed each graphic individually and added a blank paragraph above each paragraph of text that should align with a graphic and use the Space Above of each blank paragraph to have it align with the graphic.
I'm not even sure what to search to try and solve this. I looked briefly into compound paths, but that didn't look like it would help.
I hope this is clear and thank you for any assistance at all.
Andrea

Answer 1

No problem. Click your cursor somewhere in the paragraph that ought to be aligned with the next image down, then run this Javascript.
It's not entirely accurate, as it uses the font size to do a minimal adjustment where it actually should use the font's cap height -- but you cannot get to that through scripting. This final adjustment is necessary because ID does know the baseline, and your first line ought to dip just below this to have the top of the first line aligned to the top of the image.
//DESCRIPTION:Align paragraph with image.
// Jongware, 15-Jul-2010
if (app.selection.length == 1 && app.selection[0].hasOwnProperty ("baseline") && app.selection[0].paragraphs[0].index > 0)
     // find nearest image on the right
     ypos = app.selection[0].paragraphs[0].lines[0].baseline;
     pg = app.selection[0].parentTextFrames[0];
     while (1)
          if (pg instanceof Character)
               pg = pg.parentTextFrames[0];
          if (pg instanceof Spread || pg instanceof Page)
               break;
          if (pg instanceof Document || pg instanceof Application)
               exit(0);
          pg = pg.parent;
     img = pg.allGraphics;
     dist = 999999;
     nearest = null;
     for (i=0; i<img.length; i++)
          if (img[i].geometricBounds[0] > ypos && Math.abs(img[i].geometricBounds[0] - ypos) < dist)
               dist = Math.abs(img[i].geometricBounds[0] - ypos);
               nearest = img[i];
     if (nearest == null)
          alert ("no image found nearby!");
     else
          prevm = app.activeDocument.viewPreferences.verticalMeasurementUnits;
          app.activeDocument.viewPreferences.verticalMeasurementUnits = MeasurementUnits.POINTS;
          top = nearest.geometricBounds[0];
          ypos = app.selection[0].paragraphs[0].lines[0].baseline;
          if (ypos < top)
               app.selection[0].paragraphs[0].spaceBefore = top-app.selection[0].pointSize-app.selection[0].parentStory.paragraphs.previousItem(app.selection[0].paragraphs[0]).lines[-1].baseline;
          app.activeDocument.viewPreferences.verticalMeasurementUnits = prevm;
This image shows three paragraphs aligned with their respective images (it won't work on the first paragraph, but that ought not to be necessary anyhoo).