Optional vertical space marker in CS4?

Question

Hi,
Just wondering if anyone knows if there exists, in IDCS4, some sort of way
of creating vertical space between paragraphs that will not appear if the
paragraph happens to begin at the top of the page.
Obviously, until now I've been using paragraph styles. But some kind of
vertical space marker would be so much simpler. You could have one for a
half-line height, or a full-line height and just insert them as necessary.
If not, any workarounds except for paragraph styles?
Thanks,
Ariel
Win XPSP3, IDCS4ME

Answer 1

Yes. Harbs idea is simpler than mine, because you don't have to fiddle with
textwrap settings.
So to summarize:
1. disable Skip by leading in preferences.
2. make sure the text frame you're working in has "First Baseline" set to
exact or leading.
2. create a line the length of the gap you wish.
3. cut and paste it at the beginning of the paragraph above which a gap
should appear.
4. Set it to an "above line" anchored object (or better, create an object
style to do this at a keystroke)
(If at some stage the leading changes, with CS4 you can do a search and
replace for the length of the line.)
I think that's pratical enough to be useable.
Here's a quote from "The Complete Manual of Typography" by James Felici,
published by Adobe Press:
"Dedicated typesetting systems typically had a command that let you add a
vertical space band of whatever width werever you wanted. Such a space band
was an independent entity, not tied to any paragraph. The software
recoginized it as a role-playing spacing element, and when that role wasn't
required-[as at the beginning of a page]-it would ignore the vrtical space
band. Unfortunately, this facility has yet to find its way into popular
desktop systems."
But at least there's a workaround....
Thanks,
Ariel