Make spacing at top of page consistent

[Steve Thackery]

Set up style Heading 1 to have a 24pt space above.

When it is the first line of a document, or comes immediately after a page break, the heading text has a 24pt space above it, pushing it down from the top of the page.

However, when a Heading 1 does NOT have a page break in front of it, but happens to be at the top of a page, it does NOT have a 24pt space at the top pushing it down.

Thus we have some Heading 1 entries level with the top of the page, and some 24pt below the top of the page. This looks inconsistent and wrong.

The same is true for other styles, including 'Normal', whenever 'Space before' is set. 'Normal' text which runs on to the next page has no space at the top, whereas 'Normal' text which follows a page break has a space. Again we get inconsistent gaps at the top of the pages.

Personally I would prefer 'Space before' always to be ignored for the top line of a page. However, I realise this may not suit everyone.

Therefore please provide an option something like this:

• a/ Always suppress paragraph spacing at top of page
  
  b/ Never suppress paragraph spacing at top of page
  
  c/ Paragraph spacing at top of page follows built-in rules

Anyone else have any views on this?

[Robert]

Authors should build documents consistently. If some of your Heading 1 paragraphs have a (manual?) page break before, you should make it so for all Heading 1 paragraphs. In this way, vertical spacing at the top of pages would be consistent for all Heading 1 paragraphs.
Also note that the documents created in Atlantis and in most word processors have reflowable contents. Accordingly, Atlantis cannot anticipate when a Heading 1 paragraph will be reflowed to the top of a page. This can be anticipated only when a hard page break is placed before the Heading 1 paragraph, one way or the other.
Now, there is a savvier way to make sure that all Heading 1 paragraphs have equal vertical spacing at the top of pages. First define the desired Spacing Before value for the Heading 1 style, then activate the “Page break before” option on the “Line & Page Breaks” tab of the same Heading 1 style. In this way, Atlantis will automatically place any of such Heading 1 paragraphs at the top of a new page, with the specified Spacing Before value.
HTH.
Robert

[Steve Thackery]

Thanks for your comments, Robert.

However, I don't agree. When writing a technical report or paper, it is quite normal to have a hierarchical set of Heading styles, without requiring any of those style to invoke a page break.

Take a look at any published academic paper: they don't have blank sections at the bottom of the page or column when the next line is a Heading 1. Heading 1s can appear anywhere on the page, and the text flows continuously without blank areas.

I'm not sure what you mean when you say Atlantis "cannot anticipate when a Heading 1 paragraph will reflow to the top of a page." It doesn't have to anticipate anything; simply, if a Heading 1 happens to appear at the top of a page (for any reason) don't include its 'Space before'. If it's not at the top, then include it. Simple.

This is even more important when you have two columns on a page, so the difference in the gap at the top is very obvious. It just looks too weird to have text starting at the top of the left column, and then a different gap at the top of the right column (which is exactly what you get if you just start typing on a page and it flows into the next column). See attached picture.



Hey, I can't get the image to work. I'll try to fix it......

[Steve Thackery]

https://www.dropbox.com/s/xjp7wh099ljtk ... w.png?dl=0

Poop - how do I get images to appear?

[Steve Thackery]

I think one key point to acknowledge is that you can avoid this problem by not using 'Space before', but spacing paragraphs with 'Space after' instead.

However, it causes problems. In-column (or in-page) headings are normally separated from the preceding text by a larger-than-normal space above them. Having a larger-than-normal space after them looks wrong because then it looks like the heading belongs to the previous text.

That's why 'Space before' is so useful, but only if it is (or can be) suppressed at the top of a page or column.

Of course you can forget 'Space before' and 'Space after' altogether, and just use multiple paragraph breaks to get the spacing you want, but that is obviously a massive bodge and totally blows up when inserting additional text and the multiple breaks spread over two columns (or pages).

[admin]

I am not sure that introducing new document formatting options that would not be supported by other word processing applications, makes sense.

You can include "spacing before" as line break characters directly in your "Heading 1" paragraphs. Here is how to proceed:

1. Press Ctrl+H to open the "Replace" tab of the "Find / Replace" dialog.

2. Click the "More..." button (if available):



3. Check the "Format" box below the "Find what" box. Also make sure that the "Use wildcards" box is checked:



4. Click the "Style" button below the "Find what" box, and double-click the "Heading 1" style:





5. Place the following regular expression to the "Find what" box:

(<<[!^l]*^p)



It means "find a paragraph that does not begin with a line break character".

6. Put the following regular expression in the "Replace with" box:

^l\1

It means "insert a line break character before a found item".



To have a larger "space before" headings, you could use the following "replace with" strings:

^l^l\1

or

^l^l^l\1

or

^l^l^l^l\1

and so on.

7. Click "Replace All":

[Steve Thackery]

I am not sure that introducing new document formatting options that would not be supported by other word processing applications, makes sense.

Firstly, my sincere thanks for you going to all that trouble! I'm going to explore your solution fully before replying properly, but right now I just want to express my gratitude for your speedy and detailed response.

[Robert]

Please, have a look a the following page:
Trying to suppress extra line spacing at top of page
This method seems to work in both Atlantis and MS Word.
HTH.
Robert

[Steve Thackery]

Please, have a look a the following page:
Trying to suppress extra line spacing at top of page
This method seems to work in both Atlantis and MS Word.
HTH.
Robert

Thank you! That method appears to work perfectly at all times, including after manual page breaks and automatic (text flow) page breaks, EXCEPT:

• 1/ When the first line of a document is a Heading style
  
  2/ When the first line after a 'Section Break (Next Page) is a Heading style

In those two cases you get the 'Space before' above the headings. However, as there is only one start to each document, and I don't make heavy use of section breaks, this is such a small issue I'm tempted to say the problem is resolved. It is easy enough to select those specific headings at the end of editing and modify them to have zero 'Space before'.

I appreciate that Atlantis must retain compatibility with Word, but I honestly think that Word's top-spacing algorithm is poor and overly complicated. The method described in the link is, after all, a workaround.

I'll report back with further results after more experimentation. Thank you again for your inputs.

[Robert]

You might want to place the following paragraph formatting icons on your toolbars if they are not already there:

Add/Remove spacing before paragraph:

Add/Remove spacing after paragraph:

Add/Remove spacing before & after paragraph:

Decrease spacing before paragraph:

Increase spacing before paragraph:

Decrease spacing after paragraph:

Increase spacing after paragraph:


HTH.
Robert

[Steve Thackery]

Thanks Robert; done, in both Word and Atlantis!