In technical books it is a frequently used technique to sign some paragraphs
with special icons. For example if the author wants to show that a paragraph
contains something important than he/she can put an image near the paragraph.
Usually a exclamation mark in a triangle or a straight index-finger is used to
call attention. 

Other example is if the author wants to sign in a lecture book that the reader
(=student) should write something by his/her own words. In this case the icon
could be a paper with a pencil. 

Originally I would do such a paragraph in OOo with 3 cm indent from left, then
insert a frame and put the proper image into this frame. But if I have in a 300
page long document 100 paragraphs like this then it is a very boring job to do
this all the time. 

I would like to have a tool called "graphical initial" or something like this
which is similar to normal initial (Format => Paragraph => Drop Caps) with the
difference that it would not show the first letter of the paragraph but a
special image. Using this as a style I could reformat easily all the paragraphs
in my 300 page long document.