Reconsiling "Baseline Grid" with "First Baseline Offest" cant figure it out.

If you are very disciplined about leading, paragraph spacing, the position of text frames, and the font and type size of your copy you don’t need a baseline grid.

James -- I mostly agree with Rob. And as to your query 'Is this kind of uber-precision even possible?', I'd say 'Yes' and 'No'. The publishers I worked with in the UK had basically two requirements about alignment: the top and the bottom of the text. Text mustn't stick out from the top of the page, and headings can be lowered a bit (as in Rob's last example). At the foot of the page, the last line of text must be at the bottom margin. Spreads should balance, so to make pages you can run pages a line short or long. That's the Yes answer: precision is always possible.

In between the first and last pages very often text is not on the baseline grid. Cases in point are most types of secondary text, which is preceded and followed by half a line of white so that e.g. a block of numbered or bulleted text is not aligned to the baseline. Quoted text is usually set in smaller type, which will have its own leading, so it can't align the the baseline. And it too has half lines of white before and after. That's the No part.

The main comment of the production editors I have worked with was always: We have all these rules. Try and follow them as best as you can. Break any of the rules if it makes the page look better. Most typographic rules are guidelines. If you adhere to them blindly and uncompromisingly you usually end up with gruesome type.

A meta-query to the other pros here, and not intended as any reflection on the OP or the solutions discussed...

I am a fairly meticulous layout ween, especially for books, and often intentionally chain my efforts to a baseline grid to help in that precision. I've arm-wrassled with others here who say it's not necessary if you set all your leading and vertical spacing precisely. I understand both sides of that — at least, I think I do — but I've found working within the constraints of a baseline grid more useful than not.

But, we get these occasional queries, often from new or newer users, who are frustrated in exactly the way the OP here is, that they can't make all of the vertical alignments "perfect" and always conforming to the rules no matter how the content flows. And so it goes back and forth with this point and that point and this setting and that setting, and the OP usually remains frustrated because it won't all work together automatically. (I think we all remember a recent titanic case of this.)

So my question to those who apply their expertise to these questions is: Is this kind of uber-precision even possible? Can all of the vertical spacing settings across all of the relevant elements be set so that all content is always perfectly aligned, top to bottom, line by line, paragraph by paragraph, regardless of how the content flows?

Because my sense is that the answer is "no." That no combination of all these settings will eliminate the need of the designer to work on each page separately to adjust and override one setting or another to get that holy grail of completely perfect alignment.

It seems that one faction keeps insisting one more setting will do it, while others more or less agree with what I just stated, but keep offering solutions without quite stating that automation only goes so far... maybe 97%, but almost never 100%.

Am I missing something in the extreme command of ID's settings, or are these (often novice) requests/insistences just not quite attainable?

You can use this script:

https://creativepro.com/files/kahrel/indesign/page_set-up.html

to get exactly what you want. It essentially automates all the calculations that Rob outlined.

The very short answer is that it is very difficult to have text touch the top of a text box, whether you are using baselines or not. Trying to align text-tops in one column with a rigid border like the top of a photo in the next, and keep all text aligned across the columns, is... next to impossible.

If you want all of the very precise, mathematical layout (something I approve of, in the right projects), you are going to have to accept that text and the top frame edge are going to be offset. One solution is to actually bring the photo or other graphic down that point or two so that it aligns with the text, not vice versa. It will take a sharp, fussy eye to notice that the visual top margin on such a page is lower than one with two photos in the columns, left at the top margin. Or, you can tweak all top-of-page graphics down that bit, for consistency.

That is, the text height will be your effective top margin, not the top of the text frame. Work out the layout from there.