There is no way to make this kind of shape. You can type quite a lot of text and have it shaped like a block in the page. Then you can put another block of text right next to it. You can't do this without tables. There is no way to make this kind of shape.
Tables can have the same background graphic for the whole table.
Here is a block of text that is formatted to look really nice. You can type quite a lot of text and have it shaped like a block in the page. Then you can put another block of text right next to it. You can't do this without tables. There is no way to make this kind of shape.