Regarding the third point, I had found that when $width_to_height = 1/1.9, the code is unstable (perhaps because it exposes a bug in Text::Autoformat; try with $iterations_limit = 4) and so I did not experiment too much on aspect ratio. However, since your post, I have found that values of $width_to_height smaller than 1/1.9, e.g., 1/2.05, work and yeild more circular looking outputs.