space at paragraph style change?

[aaron]

I am typesetting a document with several long quotations, which are made up of multiple paragraphs. I have a paragraph style for the quotations that properly indents them, but I'd also like extra space between the regular text and the quotation. The obvious thing of adding "space before" or "space after" in the quotation paragraph style doesn't work because the quotations are multiple paragraphs, so I end up with space between the paragraphs of the quotation too.

Another thing that might work is the equivalent of a forced line break, but one that goes to the first line indent instead of the left indent. However I am not aware of the existence of anything like that.

Does anyone have any ideas?

Thanks,
Aaron Rendahl
Robbinsdale, MN

[GuyB]

Hi aaron,

I think the only way is to create two other paragraph styles (assuming you have already two : "regular" and "quotation") which would be applied to the last paragraph of each of those two, just before changing.

One would be "regular last" wich would include the "space after" you want to separate it from the "quotation" that follows.

The other would be "quotation last" wich would include the "space after" you want to separate it from the "regular" that follows.

[aaron]

Thanks, I'll try that. It's not as elegant as I was hoping for but it should work.

[Marketx]

Why not simply use different text boxes? That way you'll be able to give it as much space as you want, right??:confused:

[eugenetyson]

why not put your quotations in as tables. There will be no anchoring for text boxes that way. You can have a space before and after a table, plus you can use paragraph and character styles independently inside the table. If you have indesign CS3 then you can GREP all your quotations and convert to a table.

Here's a link to introduce you to GREP http://www.yabb-adobe-doo.com/indesign_cs3/indesign_cs3_grep_800.html

[GuyB]

Hi Marketx and Eugenetyson,

I think that using different text boxes or using tables is far more annoying and is more time consuming than to simply use different paragraph styles. You would have to stop typing to create another box, or another table, place this other box, manually, at the desired distance ("space after")... And what happens if you make changes in your document ? You will have a multitude of text boxes and/or tables to rearrange ?!
I don't know, maybe that I'm missing something but I think that having the text in one box (reflow) and assigning a keyboard shortcut to each paragraph style is far more easier, simpler and faster.

[eugenetyson]

Why don't you then:

Change the space before and space after for the Quotation style to the desired amount.

Yes, this will apply to all your quotation and have huge gaps between your paragraphs. Stay with me.

Then do a Find and Replace for:

Paragraph Style: Quotation

Find: ^p^p

Change to: ^n^n,

thus replacing the paragraph returns in your quotations to soft returns, thus not applying the space before and after.

If you want then you can set your change prefences to font size 24 or 6 or whatever size you want the gap to be between your quotations.

It's the simplest answer.

[Marketx]

is there any way to make ID (CS) create a new text box automatically as soon as you get to the end of the one you are writing on??:confused:

[GuyB]

No, there's no direct way of doing this. The only thing I could think of would be a script, fired up by a keyboard stoke, that would create a text box when and where you want it.

[Marketx]

And you wouldn't happend to know of such script, right??
uh, by the way, does any one know if cross referencing is possible outside of an index? I do loads of user manuals wirh "see chapter X for more information", and would like ID to automatically change it when "chapter X changers to something else...

[GuyB]

Hi Marketx,

I don't know of such a script but you could take a look at :

http://www.adobe.com/cfusion/exchange/

there are a lot of scripts (and other stuff too), most of them free.

As for your other question, you should start another thread since it's a different theme than the present one.

[eugenetyson]

http://www.adobe.com/cfusion/exchange/index.cfm?event=productHome&exc=19&loc=en_us

Plenty of scripts here.

[Len Zigante]

And you wouldn't happend to know of such script, right??
uh, by the way, does any one know if cross referencing is possible outside of an index? I do loads of user manuals with "see chapter X for more information", and would like ID to automatically change it when "chapter X changers to something else...

I don't know if such a script makes sense since how is Indesign suppose to know where to place the new text box & what size/attributes? Also, is it suppose to be linked to the one you were previously in or not? My suggestion is if you need a new text box, click on your page where you want it with the text tool selected; indesign will automatically create a text box where u clicked and will utilize whatever default style your text tool has applied to it.

As for the "see chapter X for more info", I figured out a way to do this quite some time ago that works well. It does take a few steps and is best done once your layout is finished so all your links can be updated simultaneously. Unfortunately if you are using Indesign CS (don't know about later versions) it must be done in a certain way since this version has a bug in how it links & subsequently updates. I'm hoping that has been fixed in the later versions as it limits your options in how you can present the information. I regret tho that I do ask for a $20 donation each time I reveal this method and supply the necessary instructions & prepared files as it took me 3 solid days of brain wracking experimentation & testing to come up with a method that works. However it'll save you a considerable amount of time if you have a lot of such entries thus it's well worth the pittance in my opinion. Contact me if you are interested.

[The Repro Kid]

Wow, a relatively simple typesetting exercise seems to have ballooned into literal quagmire.

All you need to do is clean up your text before applying styles. If you don't want spaces between the various Quote Paragraphs, then just clean up the hard returns that separate the quote paragraphs out of your text and replace them with Soft returns. Then when you apply your style, you won't have spaces between any paragraphs separated with soft-return line breaks.

[eugenetyson]

Wow, a relatively simple typesetting exercise seems to have ballooned into literal quagmire.

All you need to do is clean up your text before applying styles. If you don't want spaces between the various Quote Paragraphs, then just clean up the hard returns that separate the quote paragraphs out of your text and replace them with Soft returns. Then when you apply your style, you won't have spaces between any paragraphs separated with soft-return line breaks.

That's what I said, I even supplied the steps in doing this. It's quite simple and easy to implement and will be done in seconds and for free. You don't need scripts, you just need to think hard about what you want to happen, apply it on a small scale to see if it works then apply it globally when you are convinced it is working. But do it on copy :) you can never be too sure.