METHOD AND APPARATUS FOR FORM AUTOMATIC LAYOUT

• US 20090307576A1
• Filed: 08/24/2009
• Published: 12/10/2009
• Est. Priority Date: 01/14/2005
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Callahan Cellular LLC (Intellectual Ventures LLC)
• Original Assignee: Jowtiff Bros AB LLC (Intellectual Ventures LLC)
• Inventors: Lee, Anthony, Davydok, Dmitri, Thomson, Nicholas James, Legler, Ian Carl
• Granted Patent: US 8,151,181 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 715/221
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/174 Form filling; Merging
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/58 Use of machine translation, e.g. for multi-lingual retrieval, for server-side translation for client devices or for real-time translation
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 9/454 Multi-language systems; Localisation; Internationalisation

Abstract

A method and apparatus are provided for determining the layout of a form automatically to accommodate text in the form. Under the method and apparatus, a set of parameters define the sizing and alignment of elements of the form. Sizing and positioning instructions that are separate from the sizing and alignment parameters set the sizing and positioning of elements of the form based on the sizing and alignment parameters. The instructions determine the minimum size for the form, based in part on text in the form. The difference between the minimum size for the form and a desired size for the form is then distributed across the form to size and position the elements in the form.

Claims

1. A tangible computer-readable medium having stored thereon, computer-executable instructions that, if executed by a computing device, cause the computing device to perform a method comprising:

determining a minimum size of a form based in part on a plurality of text entries to be displayed in a plurality of respective elements in the form;

determining a difference between the minimum size of the form and a requested size for the form; and

setting the size and position of elements in the form based at least in part on the difference between the minimum size of the form and the requested size for the form.

2. The medium of claim 1, wherein the determining of the minimum size of the form based on the plurality of text entries to be displayed comprises evaluating a plurality of languages of the plurality of text entries.

3. The medium of claim 2, wherein the determining of the minimum size of the form based on the plurality of text entries to be displayed further comprises, for each element of the plurality of respective elements in the form, determining a maximum size of the element for each of the plurality of languages.

4. The medium of claim 3, wherein the setting of the size and position of the elements in the form comprises dividing the difference between the minimum size of the form and the requested size for the form into a plurality of blocks of extra space and distributing the plurality of blocks of extra space between the elements in the form.

5. The medium of claim 4, wherein the setting of the size and position of elements in the form further comprises, distributing the plurality of blocks of extra space approximately evenly between the elements in the form.

6. A system comprising:

a processor;

a memory communicatively coupled to the processor, the memory having stored therein computer-executable instructions configured to implement the system including;

instructions to determine a minimum size of a form based in part on a plurality of text entries to be displayed in a plurality of respective elements in the form;

instructions to determine the difference between the minimum size of the form and a requested size for the form; and

instructions to set the size and position of elements in the form based at least in part on the difference between the minimum size of the form and the requested size for the form.

7. The system of claim 6, wherein the instructions to set the size and position of elements in the form comprise instructions to divide the difference between the minimum size of the form and the requested size of the form into a plurality of blocks of extra space and distribute the blocks of extra space approximately evenly between the elements in the form.

8. The system of claim 7, wherein the instructions to determine a minimum size include instructions to determine a maximum size of text entries to be displayed in the plurality of respective elements in the form for a language in which the form is being displayed.

9. An apparatus comprising:

means for determining a size constraint of a form based in part on a set of text entries to be displayed, respectively, in a set of elements in the form;

means for evaluating a function of the size constraint of the form and a target size for the form; and

means for determining size and position of the set of elements in the form based at least in part on a result output by the means for evaluating the function.

10. The apparatus of claim 9, wherein the means for evaluating includes means for determining a difference between the size constraint and the target size.

11. The apparatus of claim 10, wherein the means for determining the size and the position of the set of elements includes means for determining the size and the position of the set of elements based on the difference between the size constraint and the target size.

12. A system comprising:

a processor;

a memory communicatively coupled to the processor, the memory having stored therein computer-executable instructions configured to implement the system including;

instructions to generate a form tree;

instructions to retrieve form layout parameters;

instructions to retrieve text; and

instructions to lay out a form using the form tree, the retrieved form layout parameters, and the retrieved text.

13. The system of claim 12, wherein the instructions to retrieve the text include instructions to retrieve a language of the text.

14. The system of claim 13, wherein the instructions to lay out the form use the language of the retrieved text.

15. A tangible computer-readable medium having stored thereon, computer-executable instructions that, if executed by a computing device, cause the computing device to perform a method comprising:

generating a form tree;

retrieving form layout parameters;

retrieving text; and

laying out a form using the form tree, the retrieved form layout parameters, and the retrieved text.

16. The medium of claim 15, wherein the retrieving of the form layout parameters comprises retrieving extensible markup language (XML) code.

17. The medium of claim 15, wherein the laying out of the form further comprises modifying a size of at least one control on the form based on a size of at least one text field from the text.

18. The medium of claim 17, further comprising modifying the layout of the form based on a size of the modified control.

19. The medium of claim 18, the modifying further comprises, distributing excess space within the form based on the size of the modified control.

20. The medium of claim 15, wherein the retrieving text includes retrieving a language associated with the text.

21. The medium of claim 20, wherein the laying out of the form includes laying out the form with the language of the text.

22. The medium of claim 21, wherein the retrieving of the form layout parameters includes selecting the form layout parameters based at least in part on the language of the text.