Space above in Paragraph Style doesn't work for first line

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harryllama

Hello, I'm quite a newbie at Scribus, but I've used other desktop pub programs over the years, so not too steep a learning curve...

One thing I noticed in the Paragraph Styles is that when I put in a Space above, it doesn't work unless there is some text above it! In other words, if I want the first line to start 36 pts down the page (like Chapter One), I need a blank line above it in default paragraph style for the space above to work.  Is this a feature, or a bug?  Other workarounds?

GarryP

The "Space Above" setting should be read as "Space between this paragraph and the previous one, if any" and if there's no previous paragraph then - as you have seen - Scribus ignores this. As far as I know it's just how Scribus works (I don't think the user has a way of changing this or, at least, I've not seen one).

There are probably many different ways of doing what you want but they would depend on the specific circumstances.

If you have your text split by chapters - with a new text frame chain for each chapter, which is usual - then a quick way to introduce a gap before the chapter heading would be to have the Y position of the first text frame at the required position down the page.

Another quick and dirty way would be to add a rectangle - with no fill or line colour - where the gap should be and use the text flow options to make the text flow around the rectangle.

Neither of these are particularly sophisticated techniques but they will work for most situations.

harryllama

Thanks, those are good ideas! Right now I'm simplay adding a blank default paragraph, and that seems to do the trick as well. Just wanted to confirm that this was normal behavior!