Well, if you're doing this for a company, can't you have the option of using a commercial alternative if you make it clear to the company that there's no chance of something like that being implemented for free? I mean, images in a text area??? You'll need some Java shit to implement something like that.

What language is the server-side stuff gonna be in? Maybe you could have them save RTF documents and upload those as a file upload, then parse the RTF for bolds and such server-side… Just shooting in the dark.