You need textbackground to draw the frame around the text
That's the funny thing ... apparently I don't! See the code in my previous mail. There I seem to get the frame from the \setlayerframed command alone.
You can still write the text in a buffer and use the buffer in the streamlayer.
OK.
When you want only text in two columns \startsimplecolumns ... \stopsimplecolumns is a alternative to the normal columns environment and it works also in \framed (which is used in \setlayerframed).
I'm afraid that doesn't make the vertial space vanish :-( Any ideas? Also, can I force the streamlayer to have a fixed height? In the example I'd like the first column to be filled all the way down to the visible bottom frame and then the remaining text should be broken to the second column. At the moment both columns are filled with roughly equal amounts of text... Oliver