Hi all, First, thank you Matej for suggesting titlesec. Of all the solutions I tried, and I tried several, that was the most straightforward. Using the \titlespacing command, it's very easy to put just the right amount of space above and below the header, regardless of your \parskip value (Layout->Document->Separation).
I was able to tweak it using Herbert's tip on his website, but that left me open to all sorts of erratic behavior based on what environments were above and below. I was unable to change the below spacing using just the sectsty package, although it was by far the easiest to use for fonts. The primary problem with titlesec is its documentation is horrendous, with absolutely no examples. I ended up getting examples from Google searches, and trying them until one worked, and then slowly twisting it into shape. Here is the code for my section, subsection, and subsubsection. I'm satisfied with it, and believe it conforms nicely with http://www.ntg.nl/maps/pdf/19_10.pdf and http://www.ntg.nl/maps/pdf/19_11.pdf: \usepackage{titlesec}% Special fonts for sections %\titleformat{\section}[hang]{\large\bfseries}{\thesection}{.5em} {\hspace{0.2in}}{} \titleformat{\section}[hang]{\Large\sffamily\bfseries}{\rule[0in]{0.4in} {0.17in}\rule[0in]{.1in}{0in}\thesection}{.5em}{\hspace{0.2in}}{} \titlespacing{\section}{0pt}{0.9cm}{-0.2cm} \titleformat{\subsection}[hang]{\large\sffamily\bfseries}{\rule[0in]{0.4in} {0.05in}\rule[0in]{.1in}{0in}\thesubsection}{.5em}{\hspace{0.2in}}{} \titlespacing{\subsection}{0pt}{0.3cm}{-0.3cm} \titleformat{\subsubsection}[hang]{\small\sffamily\bfseries}{\rule[0in]{0.4in} {0.015in}\rule[0in]{.1in}{0in}\thesubsubsection}{.5em}{\hspace{0.2in}}{} \titlespacing{\subsubsection}{0pt}{0.0cm}{-0.5cm}
