How do I fill a shape with text, like a circle?

Question

How do I confine text within a shape such as a circle or triangle? I don't want text along the perimeter, I would like it to break appropriately at all the inner edges.

Answer 1

Look at shapepar (manual) for how to do it.

Answer 2

As @Yossi mentioned before, shapepar is your friend. The full documentation is at its usual place in CTAN. Here's an example how to use it:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{shapepar}
\begin{document}

\def\triangledownshape{%
{0}%
{0}b{0}\\%
{0}t{-10}{20}\\%
{8.66}t{-5}{10}\\%
{17.32}e{0}%
}
\def\triangledownpar#1{\Shapepar\triangledownshape #1\unskip\ $\bigtriangledown$\par}

\triangledownpar{This is an example of a shape created with 
   \texttt{shapepar}. Other predefined possibilities include \textbf{circle},     
   \textbf{donut}, \textbf{heart}, \textbf{star}, \textbf{star}, \textbf{nut}, 
   \textbf{rectangle}. Also, there are other definitions currently not included 
   by default, which you'd find in the \texttt{*shapes.def} files in the
   \texttt{shapepar} directory~--- \textbf{drops}, \textbf{triangles} (facing all 
   directions), \textbf{\TeX logo}, \textbf{candle}, \textbf{Canadian flag}. 
   Your result may or may not look weird, depending on the size of the shape
   and the word distribution.}

\end{document}

Cutouts with custom shapes are also possible, but I haven't tried that in this particular example.

Personally, I find defining new shapes not very straight-forward, but YMMV. Also, if you're into xfig (I'm not), you could try the shapepatch package which basically patches (duh!) the xfig package so that you could use your masterpiece as a boundary for shapepar. I can't comment how well this works, though -- I've never used it.