How to align the top of the text with the top of a figure produced by tikz in minipage

Question

How to align the top of the figure produced by tikz with the top of a text positioned next to it. Both the figure and the text are encapsulated by a minipage each. I just got an approximate but totally manual effect using \vspace at the end of theminipage that contains the figure.

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{tikz, lipsum}
\begin{document}
\begin{minipage}{1\textwidth}
\fbox{
\begin{minipage}{0.8\textwidth}
%\hspace{.002in}
%\noindent
\textsf{\vspace{.3in}\\}
\setlength\parindent{5pt}
    \begin{minipage}{.5\textwidth}
    \textsf{\fontsize{10}{6}\selectfont \lipsum[1]}
            \end{minipage}
\setlength\parindent{9pt}
    \begin{minipage}{.5\textwidth}
        \begin{tikzpicture}[scale=0.5]
    \draw [help lines] (0,0) grid (8,17);
    \end{tikzpicture}
        \vspace{1.17in}
\end{minipage}
\end{minipage}
}
\end{minipage}
\end{document}

Answer 1

You can use a combination of adjustbox with the valign option and the TikZ baseline option. Also I think you're using too many minipages. I have stripped some of them off.

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{adjustbox, tikz, lipsum}
\begin{document}

\fbox{%
  \begin{adjustbox}{valign=T,minipage=.5\textwidth}
    \textsf{\fontsize{10}{6}\selectfont \lipsum[1]}
  \end{adjustbox}%
  \hspace{1em}%
  \begin{tikzpicture}[scale=0.5,baseline={(current bounding box.north)}]
    \draw [help lines] (0,0) grid (8,17);
  \end{tikzpicture}%
}

\end{document}