Although it may not be suitable for creating any entire book of pages, see https://tiddlytools.com/#SamplePasteUp for an example of a grid layout tool for creating free-form “paste up” tiddler content.
It uses macro code from TiddlyTools/PasteUp and a ViewTemplate from TiddlyTools/PasteUp/View to provide an interactive grid layout tool. Using this tool, you can place any literal field values, transclusions, widgets or macro output at any arbitrary grid position, and apply CSS to each of those elements to add extra styles to the output. It also supports “layers” so that elements can overlap each other.
To try it, view the above “SamplePasteUp” tiddler and click on the “lock” button (upper-left, above the grid layout). Then, just click on any element displayed in the grid to show a modal dialog to edit that element. The grid also handles drag-and-drop to move/resize elements.
You can also click on the “This is a Sample PasteUp >>” heading above the grid to view a table containing a summary of all the field value definitions, top/left/bottom/right/layer coordinates and added CSS styles. The table cells are directly editable to make changes to the layout, which are immediately refreshed in the grid display.
enjoy,
-e