\shapepar is a macro to typeset paragraphs in a specific shape. The size is adjusted automatically so that the entire shape is filled with text. There may not be displayed maths or "\vadjust" material (no "\vspace") in the argument of \shapepar. The macros work for both LaTeX and plain TeX. For LaTeX, specify \usepackage{shapepar}, or for Plain, \input shapepar.sty.

\shapepar works in terms of user-defined shapes, though the package does provide some predefined shapes: so you can form any paragraph into the form of a heart by putting \heartpar{sometext...} inside your document. The tedium of creating these polygon definitions may be alleviated by using the shapepatch extension to transfig which will convert xfig output to \shapepar polygon form.

The author is Donald Arseneau.