Your text isn't aligned across those columns, Acorn. But then, I don't know whether you desired to illustrate Xara's inability to do so without faffing about or believe it is.

It can be done. It's also a right pita to do so with anything except a basic book style layout.

Even in something meant to do layout, a grid is not an absolute necessity to accomplish this. A grid is just a tool. I use baseline grids in perhaps 1/2 or more of the books I do (and the newspapers I've set up), but if the text is simple enough, the styles can be created so as to compensate for a no-grid layout and that's what I'll use (or not use depending on how one looks at it).

Mike