Dave Pawson wrote:

If you really must have them,
how about tranforming to SVG?
or if fop is adequate, use a mix of fo and svg?

I figure to do the second one would need to layer fo on top of svg, the
svg inside of an instream-foreign-object, and the fo positioned on top
of it. In my experience with fop I've not been able to do this
satisfactorily. Have you found that it is possible to position and if so
do you have any helpful hints etc.

Usually "Use SVG" means "convert the entire thing (table)
to SVG". Not really easy with arbitrary text but often
achievable.

If you have the freedom to use absolute positioning, you
can use this. Another possibility is to use unclipped
non-wrapping table cell text:
 <fo:table>
   <fo:table-column column-width="1en"/>
   <fo:table-column column-width="20cm"/>
   <fo:table-body>
    <fo:table-row>
      <fo:table-cell>
        <fo:block wrap-option="no-wrap">&#160;The Text</fo:block>
      </fo:table-cell>
      <fo:table-cell>
        <fo:block>
         <fo:instream-foreign-object>
           <svg:svg ......
         </fo:instream-foreign-object>
        </fo:block>
      </fo:table-cell>
    </fo:table-row>
   </fo:table-body>
 </fo:table>

I'm sure there are more possibilities for creatively abusing
FO facilities.