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I would like to have text flow around the positive space of the background image in my PDF, kind of like the image on the left (from the DnD 5e player's handbook):

I'm not really tied to a particular package or workflow, but the easiest method in terms of content creation would just be to create a B/W mask such as the image on the far right, however I'm not sure how to translate that into a method to control the flow of text. flowfram seems promising, but also seems like a lot of effort for images which will reflow the text using multiple rectangles (I count three just for this sample image).

EDIT: I would like to use this for longer pieces of text with multiple paragraphs, section headers, figures, and so on.

Postscript: Please feel free to tag this question as any specific tags I could think of don't exist.

rightbrace
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    Welcome to TeX.SE! I think for the above, shapepar should do the trick. –  Nov 03 '18 at 04:08
  • "this style is mainly intended for cards, invitations etc., not for whole books!" while I didn't mention it in the question, I would like to be able to typeset long pieces of text, including paragraphs, tables, and section headers. I see why this would be incredibly difficult with the documentation's example shapes (I shudder at the thought of section headers in a smiley face), but my use will be fully filled shapes with right angled corners. – rightbrace Nov 03 '18 at 04:15
  • In my opinion this sort of this is just not worth doing in LaTeX. You can do it, but there are no easy methods. xgalley and l3galley seem like they might eventually be useful. But they are not ready yet. I'd cut my loses and use Scribus. – David Purton Nov 03 '18 at 04:37
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    You can use \parshape to adjust the way a paragraph will flow. See How to layout irregular paragraph shape? – Werner Nov 03 '18 at 05:43
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    @Werner, all the methods I have seen involve modifying paragraph shapes with the assumption that images will move with paragraphs. But what about cases like the OP, where the image is at a fixed position on the page and you can't know where paragraphs will finally be positioned? (e.g., you might insert another paragraph and then you have to recalculate everything) – David Purton Nov 03 '18 at 06:12
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    @DavidPurton: Yes, and what's wrong with that? LaTeX wasn't built with such arbitrary automation in mind. If you want to do this in LaTeX, then that's about what you're left with. You can use InDesign or Inkscape otherwise if you want a more free flowing way of adjusting text blocks to shapes. – Werner Nov 03 '18 at 06:16
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    @Werner, that's kind of my point, I haven't seen reasonable methods to do what the OP wants in LaTeX. I use LaTeX to make my life easier. To have to manually recalculate many paragraph shapes and change the paragraphs they apply to on each page every time I make a change at the beginning of the document is not my idea of easier. \parshape is OK if your images are tied to the paragraph, but not if this isn't the case. – David Purton Nov 03 '18 at 06:55

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