Currently the ‘Space Before’ value is ignored when that paragraph appears on the top of any container—frame/column.

There are innumerable occasions when we need the above space settings to be honoured even when the paragraph appears on the top of the column. We InDesigners resort to various antics and workaround like keeping an ‘Invisible Rule Above’ or use a character style with extra leading etc..

It is very easily solved by a simple checkbox in the Indents and Spacing tab just below ‘Space Before’ selection which says ‘Add Space Before on column top’. If checked, the value will always be used even when the paragraph appears on the top of the page.

The new paragraph shading feature would be fantastic to use for laying out text message conversations in books/long from documents, but needs a few tweaks to make is fully functional. Text messages in books is becoming very common and having them run in the text while paging is crucial.

It used to be that you had to create shapes and anchor each in for a text message. Now you can use Paragraph Shading defined in the style for left side texts with no adjustments, but because right side text messages need to have the "bubble" shape aligned right, but the interior text left aligned. My solution is (see sample file):
Create three base paragraph styles:
1. <leftsidetext>: Defined: All text styling, paragraph shading set to Text, right/left indents, alignments, and space above/below, etc.
2. <rightsidetext>: Defined: Based on <leftsidetext>, but remove left/right indents
3. <rightsidetextalign>: Defined: Based on <rightside_text>, but change to align flush right, add right indent (if needed), turn off paragraph shading.

Next steps:
1. Cut out all the <rightsidetext> and create a standalone text frame for each text message.
2. Create (or leave) empty returns where each right side text was and apply <rightsidetext_align> to the return.
3. Paste the text frames into the empty returns where appropriate to anchor frame.
4. Select each frame and apply the Object style (Text Message Right in sample file).

Could there be a way to separately control the shading alignment from the interior text alignment within the paragraph style? Much like how text functions within a div?

The new paragraph shading feature would be fantastic to use for laying out text message conversations in books, but needs a few tweaks to make is fully functional. Text messages in books is becoming very common.

It used to be that you had to create shapes and anchor each in for a text message. Now you can use Paragraph Shading defined in the style for left side texts with no adjustments, but because right side text messages need to have the "bubble" shape aligned right, but the interior text left aligned. My solution is (see sample file):
Create three base paragraph styles:
1. <leftsidetext>: Defined: All text styling, right/left indents, alignments, and space above/below, etc.
2. <rightsidetext>: Defined: Based on <leftsidetext>, but remove left/right indents
3. <rightsidetextalign>: Defined: Based on <rightside_text>, but change to align flush right, add right indent 18pt, turn off paragraph shading.

Next steps:
1. Cut out all the rightsidetext and create a standalone text frame for each text.
2. Create (or leave) empty returns where each right side text was and apply <rightsidealign> to the return.
3. Paste the text frames into the empty returns where appropriate to anchor frame.
4. Select each frame and apply the Object style (Text Message Right in sample file attached).

Could there be a way to separately control the shading alignment from the interior text alignment within the paragraph style? Much like how text functions within a div?

When applying paragraph styles throughout a document, it is only possible to select multiple continuous paragraphs in one go. If I want to style all first level headings, for example, I have to click on each, apply the paragraph style and repeat and repeat and repeat... Often finding the appropriate style requires scrolling in the paragraph styles window. It would be very useful, and much quicker, to be able to select all headings and apply Head A (or whatever) in one click. This might be achieved by clicking in the paragraphs with a keyboard combination pressed or, as was done in Ventura, with a separate tool.

It would be great to have a more flexible method of configuring styles; the purpose being to cut down on the number of styles with only minor differences between them.

We use page templates where the layout is pretty much the same, apart from minor differences / colours. But we have to define a complete set of styles for all colour variations, greatly increasing the complexity.

However, if you can enable any setting to be stored as a variable, this could reduce the number of styles in a document by 90%. For example:

A set of master styles for the document is created, with some settings being stored as variables. These variables are then associated with a particular page template. Then, when you use the master styles in the document, the appearance changes depending on which page template they're used on.

Used this way, if you have 10 page templates and 10 styles, the total number of styles for the document would be 10. However, at the moment, you have to define styles for each of the page templates, which would mean 100 styles in the document.

This also has other implications; for example, even though there are 10 styles with only subtle differences between them, they are used for the same purpose on each page (running headers, for example) - yet keyboard shortcuts can't be assigned as you'd have to use 10 different shortcuts, and remember which one is used for which template.

There are also advantages to using variables too - if you configure a page using one page template, then need to change the style, simply changing the page template would completely change the look in one action (whereas at the moment all styles would have to be changed manually or by find and replace).

The ability to create a content format as a style. Example: currency - so you could have 19.95 or 3 or 12.2, you would have a "currency" style that takes the numbers and reformats as $19.95, $3.00, or $12.20 (with the ability to add character styles to specific elements) - so you could make the cents be superscript, make the decimal disappear. Also adding the option as to whether or not the styling should be virtual (the actual content is not changed, just the appearance) or restyled (it would actually change the content). This could be done in a GREP method, but actually allow the grep style to add characters to the output. Examples could also be automatically adding a thin-space inside of a style meant to "highlight" a word (so that the highlight starts and ends outside of the word/phrase). This could also allow for the inserting of formatting characters needed for a particular output (like a list of definitions - we need the first word, then a tab, then a hard-align character, then a run-in, an italic, etc...