I have only seen this with drop caps, not sure how generalizable outside of this limited situation it is.

1. Create new document
2. Create text frame
3. Insert some text
4. Set the paragraph format to 5-line drop cap (AnnStone)
5. Place graphic
6. Set graphic text wrap to option 5

If the top of the picture is below the second line of text in the paragraph or the bottom of the picture is at the level of the second line of text (third line of text is not wrapped) then everything is fine. All positions in between put text all over the place.

This was done with the picture right-aligned to the text frame. If it is left aligned then the text flow is correct. At some distance away from the left-side of the text frame the text flow borks.

------- Additional Comment #1 From Tim Doty 2004-10-05 23:26 -------

The exact placement causing incorrect text flow seems to vary with the text and graphic. However, with a drop cap there is easily found a "bad zone" near the beginning of the paragraph.

As the date of Tim's submission indicates, issues with drop caps and text flow on the right side of an object have been around for a very long time. Since I used to do a lot of magazine-style layouts I ran into them often, and personally I would raise this bug above the "average" rating. I've been forced to create drop caps manually more than once.

As Tim says text flow frequently "borks." In general what happens is that PageStream adopts at least the leading and sometimes all the formatting of the drop cap for the rest of the text in the paragraph sometimes overflowing a whole page. Here is a closely related case to the one he describes:

(1) Set a drop cap paragraph.
(2) On the second line, change the first word to italic. You can probably use any line that immediately abuts the right side of the dropped letter.
(3) Your text will "bork."

There's a workaround for this that I think gives some insight into what's happening.

On your first line insert a regular space ahead of the second letter on the line. Highlight the space and set the point size to .25. (Unfortunately in this case, .25 is as small as you can go.) Depending on the text, this tiny space is nearly invisible, the italic format will be accepted on the following lines, and the text flow will look okay.

Basically, once the drop cap paragraph is set up PageStream doesn't seem to recognize a logical distinction between the drop cap itself and text abutting it directly. In some ways it treats them as if they were one character.

HB