© 2008 Hewlett-Packard Development Company, L.P. The information contained herein is subject to change without notice Niranjan Damera-Venkata HP Labs Design Interface for the creation of variable page layout templates and styles

Goals of the variable page template creator  Design variable page templates effortlessly  Specify relative positions of elements ( title, text streams, figures, advertisements)  Specify optimization paths and text flow groups (multi-column, sidebars)  Set parameters controlling image scaling and whitespace on the page  Auto-generate xml stylesheet  Doc/Element style properties can be directly edited with a visual UI  Once edits are saved XML style-sheets can be auto-synthesized  Auto-generate template xml and template libraries  Allows XML generation for individual page templates, and creation of collection and library groupings  Simulate parameter settings on test data  Both page level and document level simulations are performed to validate parameter settings, with test data

Setup document properties  First, document properties are set in a UI  Allow user defined “textwidths” that are essentially MACRO definitions derived from fundamental doc attributes like page dimensions, margins etc. These MACROs can then be reffered to by name.  Sample XML generated from this step is shown below.

Place elements on a page template  A blank page template is created from doc properties and presented as a canvas to the designer  Each design element is created and positioned as a block on the page (overlap is handled with a layer attribute)  Element types include: Title, text stream, figure, advertisement Title Figure Text stream 1 Text stream 2 Example template for rendering the first page of a report with 1 figure

Edit element properties  Clicking on an element brings up the property editor appropriate for that element!  Example text stream properties include:  Fixed text width (typically set with a MACRO so that it can adapt to page dimensions)  Allowed text stream elements (head,subhead,para,list,inlinefig)  Font properties for the allowed elements  Text stream properties for main body streams are global for the whole document (any edits are applied globally to the collection stylesheet).  Text streams within sidebars may have distinct properties  Figure properties include:  Min and Max heights and widths  Caption property (set similar to text stream element properties above)

Specify optimization paths  Designer draws vertical and/or horizontal lines across the page to indicate system optimization that works to properly fit the content along each cut to the page dimensions Title Figure Text stream 1 Text stream 2 Example shows 2 vertical paths 1 horizontal path

Specify variable path parameters  System highlights (see blue segments) potential variable elements along path  Whitespace between elements  Figures along path Title Figure Text stream 1 Text stream 2 By clicking on each highlighted variable element, designer provides: min and max parameter values mean and variance equality constraints among parameters (ex: top space = bottom space) Min/max values of certain elements such as margins are automatically populated Distinct variarbles are indicated with numbers

Multi-column text groupings  When text is to flow from one column to the next, the two columns may be jointly optimized by setting a multi-column text group Title Figure Text stream 1 Text stream 2 Example shows 1 vertical path group consisting of 2 paths 1 horizontal path group consisting of 1 path By default, ungrouped paths are included in a distinct path group

Sidebar groupings  Groups of elements may be grouped into a “sidebar”  No flow of sidebar text is permitted to blocks outside a sidebar Title Figure Text stream 1 Text stream 2 Example shows 2 vertical path groups Second vertical path group includes a sidebar Horizontal path group also includes the sidebar

Splitting variables  Whitespace variables may be split into two variable to enforce a synthetic margin/boundary between blocks  Simply right-clicking a variable gives the option to split it Title Figure Text stream 1 Text stream 2 Example shows Highlighted variable elements in the horizontal grouping red cross indicates split position

Save Template and generate library XML file  Template level properties are set including name, (firstpage (yes/no), lastpage (yes/no), page-number (yes/no), side (odd/even/both)  Template is added to one/more libraries (annual report, newsletter etc.) and collections (ex: appendix, table of contents etc.)  Once all templates and collections for a library are saved an XML file encapsulating the template library can be synthesized by navigating the hierarchy shown below Collection 1 Library Collection 2 Collection n T 11 T 21 T 12 T 22 T 1n T mn

Generate collection style-sheet XML files  Inspect templates in each collection and pull together page styles, main body text stream styles, distinct sidebar styles and page number styles into a single XML file that encapsulates all the style definitions for that collection  Attached xml documents show synthesized Style files and template library for the annual report example.