A few years ago I also had wanted to have a better text ( actually, arbitrary
component ) layout algorithm for some work I was doing.  Although I didn't go
very far with this ( like many things I've tried, I guess ) I did do some
modelling of some of Knuth's layout algorithms, and I still have that code
somewhere.  I'll try to dig that out and post it, in the event that anyone
should be interested in it.  The code is written for VW 3.0, but much of it is
independent of that.

- les