Text that is centered horizontally but absolutely placed vertically

Question

I want to be able to position a chunk of text (which could be anything, could have \includegraphics, and could be on multiple lines) at the center of a page horizontally. However, I want to be able to customize its vertical position, say 4 inches from the top.

This chunk should be independent of the document's normal contents. So it should affect anything else on the page.

Is this possible?

@Thanos That would mess up the rest of the document, I guess? — MayGodBlessKnuth, Oct 07 '12 at 18:40
I would think placing it with something like textpos, background, eso-pic or tikz would be necessary to place stuff on the page and not affect everything else. — Werner, Oct 07 '12 at 18:50
Actually I am not so sure about what are you trying to do. The \vspace{} command creates a vertical space on the exact position(and only) you'd like. Try it and see if it will ruin the rest of the document. — Thanos, Oct 07 '12 at 18:51
What do you mean by "independent"? Should it not clash with anything else or should it? — doncherry, Oct 07 '12 at 18:52

score 7 · Accepted Answer · answered Oct 07 '12 at 18:53

Is this what you're looking for?

\documentclass{article}

\usepackage[absolute]{textpos}
    \setlength{\TPHorizModule}{1in} % sets our horizontal unit of measuring
    \setlength{\TPVertModule}{1in} % sets our vertical unit of measuring
    \textblockorigin{0mm}{0mm} % and we start measuring in the top left corner

\usepackage[letterpaper]{geometry} % I'm assuming you're using letter paper if you use inches

\usepackage{lipsum} % just for filler text

\begin{document}
\begin{textblock}{8.5}(0,4)\centering
  % 8.5 = width of the block
  % 0 = zero horizontal units away from our origin
  % 4 = four vertical units away from our origin
\fbox{\Huge\textsc{Hello World}}
  % the \fbox isn't necessary -- you can put here whatever you want.
\end{textblock}

\lipsum[1-4] % to provoke the clash

\end{document}

output

Text that is centered horizontally but absolutely placed vertically

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