Advanced Conditional Spacing module

The Advanced Conditional Spacing module enhances your ability to control the spacing between paragraphs. With Advanced Conditional Spacing, you can add rules to InDesign's Space Before and Space After settings. These rules can be set to dynamically suppress Space Before and Space After when certain criteria are met, such as between paragraphs of the same style or stacked headings.

The module applies local overrides to the Space Before or Space After property of the affected paragraphs depending on the preceding or following paragraph.

Two conditional spacing options are provided:

• Suppress space before if the preceding paragraph uses style . . .
• Suppress space after if the following paragraph uses style . . .

Configure the Advanced Conditional Spacing module in a workflow?

To use the Advanced Conditional Spacing module, you need two things:

1. A configuration table in the Typefi-ready template (.indd).
2. The ConditionalSpacing script.

Configuration table

Conditional Spacing is defined in a table in the template (.indd) and is implemented by an event script. You can find the table on a Conditional Spacing master page in the template. If your template does not have the configuration table, see Add a Configuration Table.

Fill in the table

The configuration table for Advanced Conditional Spacing has three columns.

1. Target Paragraph Style: Enter the target paragraph style. Only one style is allowed per cell.
2. Suppress space before if target paragraph is preceded by a paragraph in style: Enter one style per line. To enter multiple styles, place each on a separate line.
3. Suppress space after if target paragraph is followed by a paragraph in style: Enter one style per line. To enter multiple styles, place each on a separate line.

Do not use duplicate style names in the Typefi-ready template, even if you use style groups.

Add a configuration table

1. Download ConditionalSpacingTable.idms (available at the bottom of this article). 
2. Create a new master page in your InDesign template. Name it Conditional Spacing with whatever prefix your template uses (Z, X, or XC usually).
3. Choose File → Place and select the ConditionalSpacingTable.idms you downloaded in step 1.
4. Place the snippet on the ‘Conditional Spacing’ master page.

ConditionalSpacing script

The ConditionalSpacing script is a Spill end script. This help article provides step-by-step instructions for deploying scripts in a Typefi workflow.