Aribtrary positioning of displayed flow objects

[pandeng@xxxxxxxxxxxx (Steve Schafer)]

I need to position various displayed flow objects (in my case, tables)
in fairly arbitrary ways. In particular, the objects need to partially
overlap in either the filling or placement directions (not both at the
same time). Consider the "worst case" example below (you'll need to
use a fixed-pitch font for the picture to make sense):

    AAAAA  
    AAAAA  BBBBB
    AAAAA  BBBBB
           BBBBB
  CCCCC
  CCCCC  DDDDD
  CCCCC  DDDDD
         DDDDD
 
where the block of A's represents one table, the block of B's another,
and so on.

With judicious selection of column and row heights, and spanning cells
across columns and rows, I can achieve this by using a "meta-table"
that encloses the entire block of tables. I'm just wondering if there
is a better way.

-Steve


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