Traversing a hierarchical layout template

• US 8,495,097 B1
• Filed: 01/17/2008
• Issued: 07/23/2013
• Est. Priority Date: 06/21/2002
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Adobe Inc.
• Original Assignee: Adobe Systems Incorporated (Adobe Inc.)
• Inventors: Ayers, Robert M.
• Primary Examiner(s): Trujillo, James
• Assistant Examiner(s): Black, Linh
• Application Number:
  US12/016,149
• Time in Patent Office: 2,014 Days
• Field of Search: 707802-803, 707/793
• US Class Current: 707/793
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/106 Display of layout of documents; Previewing
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/117 Tagging; Marking up details of markup languages G06F40/143; Designating a block; Setting of attributes style sheets, e.g. eXtensible Stylesheet Language Transformation [XSLT], G06F40/154
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/14 Tree-structured documents parsing G06F40/205; validation G06F40/226
• CPC Class Codes: Y10S 707/99931 Database or file accessing
• CPC Class Codes: Y10S 707/99932 Access augmentation or optimizing

Abstract

Methods and apparatus implementing systems and techniques for traversing a hierarchical layout template to accelerate a constraint-driven backtracking search for a solution of the layout template. In general, in one implementation, the techniques include identifying a shared content element constraint that defines a content requirement common to all layout structures possible in a choice substructure in a hierarchical layout template, and associating the shared content element constraint with a root node of the choice substructure in the hierarchical layout template. In another aspect, the techniques include receiving content elements to be presented according to a hierarchical layout template that includes a choice substructure including a root node having a shared content element constraint that defines a content requirement common to all layout structures possible in the choice substructure, and traversing the hierarchical layout template to generate a layout structure that accommodates the content elements, said traversing including traversing the hierarchical layout template based at least in part on the shared content element constraint associated with the root node.

Claims

1. A computer-implemented method comprising:

receiving content elements to be presented according to a hierarchical layout template that includes a choice substructure including a root node having a shared content element constraint that defines a content requirement common to all layout structures possible in the choice substructure; and

traversing the hierarchical layout template to generate a layout structure that accommodates the content elements, said traversing including traversing the hierarchical layout template based at least in part on the shared content element constraint associated with the root node,

wherein the content requirement common to all layout structures possible in the choice substructure corresponds to input content required by a node of the hierarchical layout template during generation of a page layout structure to format content to produce a document that combines layout and content.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein said traversing the hierarchical layout template comprises:

selecting among template choices in the hierarchical layout template; and

generating the layout structure based on the selected template choices.

3. The method of claim 1, further comprising obtaining the hierarchical layout template.

4. The method of claim 3, wherein said obtaining the hierarchical layout template comprises loading an Interscript layout template.

5. The method of claim 3, wherein said obtaining the hierarchical layout template comprises:

loading structured text-based data; and

generating the hierarchical layout template from the structured text-based data.

6. A software product tangibly stored on a machine-readable storage device, the software product comprising instructions operable to cause one or more programmable processors to perform operations comprising:

receiving content elements to be presented according to a hierarchical layout template that includes a choice substructure including a root node having a shared content element constraint that defines a content requirement common to all layout structures possible in the choice substructure; and

traversing the hierarchical layout template to generate a layout structure that accommodates the content elements, said traversing including traversing the hierarchical layout template based at least in part on the shared content element constraint associated with the root node,

wherein the content requirement common to all layout structures possible in the choice substructure corresponds to input content required by a node of the hierarchical layout template during generation of a page layout structure to format content to produce a document that combines layout and content.

7. The software product of claim 6, wherein said traversing the hierarchical layout template comprises:

selecting among template choices in the hierarchical layout template; and

generating the layout structure based on the selected template choices.

8. The software product of claim 6, the operations further comprising obtaining the hierarchical layout template.

9. The software product of claim 8, wherein said obtaining the hierarchical layout template comprises loading an Interscript layout template.

10. The software product of claim 8, wherein said obtaining the hierarchical layout template comprises:

loading structured text-based data; and

generating the hierarchical layout template from the structured text-based data.

11. A system comprising:

a processor;

a computer-readable medium comprising instructions to cause the processor to perform operations comprising;

receiving content elements to be presented according to a hierarchical layout template that includes a choice substructure including a root node having a shared content element constraint that defines a content requirement common to all layout structures possible in the choice substructure; and

traversing the hierarchical layout template to generate a layout structure that accommodates the content elements, said traversing including traversing the hierarchical layout template based at least in part on the shared content element constraint associated with the root node,

wherein the content requirement common to all layout structures possible in the choice substructure corresponds to input content required by a node of the hierarchical layout template during generation of a page layout structure to format content to produce a document that combines layout and content.

12. The system of claim 11, wherein said traversing the hierarchical layout template comprises:

selecting among template choices in the hierarchical layout template; and

generating the layout structure based on the selected template choices.

13. The system of claim 11, the operations further comprising obtaining the hierarchical layout template.

14. The system of claim 13, wherein said obtaining the hierarchical layout template comprises loading an Interscript layout template.

15. The system of claim 13, wherein said obtaining the hierarchical layout template comprises:

loading structured text-based data; and

generating the hierarchical layout template from the structured text-based data.