JPH11282834A - Article layout device - Google Patents

Abstract

PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To provide an article layout device which can automatically lay out the articles in consideration of the adoption/rejection of the articles. SOLUTION: An article retrieval part 12 retrieves the candidate article groups to be published from an article DB(data base) 10. A user sets the significance for each candidate article to be published by using a significance giving part 14, and these candidate articles are stored in a candidate article storage part 16 in response to each significance. A publishing area designation part 18 inputs designation about the publishing areas. A simulation control part 20 repetitively selects plural articles from the part 16 with their combinations varied in sequence and supplies every selected article group to a layout simulation part 22. The part 22 lays out these article groups in the publishing area and determines the evaluation of layout results by integrating the evaluation of both composition and significance of articles. Then the part 20 outputs one with the best evaluation among those layout results which are obtained through simulation.

Description

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION

[0001]

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION 1. Field of the Invention The present invention relates to an article layout apparatus applied to an editing system for DTP, newspapers, magazines, etc., and more particularly to a technique for appropriately laying out a plurality of articles in a publication area.

[0002]

2. Description of the Related Art In the field of tourism information magazines, for example, the same region is often published in different editions every year, such as a 1997 edition and a 1998 edition. Even in such a case, the sightseeing spot information itself often resembles, although there is a slight increase / decrease / change every year. In addition, several types of tourist information magazines that include a common target area, such as the Kanto region version and the Tokyo version, are also published according to needs. In this case, articles of the same sightseeing spot are often published in different information magazines, and the contents of the articles of the same spot are usually quite similar. In view of such circumstances, in recent years, to reduce costs, attempts have been made to effectively utilize articles of tourist spots by creating a database. The sightseeing spot article itself is also a somewhat standardized content, such as name, headline, description, item information such as access method and fee, and photos, and it is suitable for creating a database, so this trial has various possibilities. It is considered a promising attempt with a secret.

[0003] Along with the development of such a database, automation of article layout processing has been demanded. A significant reduction in editing costs is expected by combining the efficiency of article creation with the use of a database and the efficiency of editing with automatic layout.

Incidentally, such a database creation concept has not yet reached the practical stage, and at present, adjustment of articles for each publication and adjustment of the layout associated therewith are performed exclusively by humans (editors). is there.

Although it does not use a database,
As a conventional technology for automating article layout processing,
For example, an article arranging device disclosed in Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 9-146949 is known. This apparatus includes a column generating unit that randomly divides the page into several regions, an allocating unit that performs layout by randomly associating each article to be published in each of the regions, a column generating unit and an allocating unit. A best layout search means for repeating the processing a predetermined number of times, obtaining an evaluation value of the layout result at each iteration, and outputting a layout result having the maximum evaluation value. In this apparatus, various layouts are automatically attempted by repeatedly using a processing capacity of a computer system to repeatedly perform a random paper area division and a random article allocation for each area. According to the above-mentioned publication, a relatively good layout result can be obtained without human intervention by outputting the one having the largest evaluation value among the various layout results thus attempted.

[0006]

SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION The above-mentioned conventional article arranging apparatus aims at automatically laying out all given articles on a designated paper as appropriately as possible. It seems that the effect of is obtained.

However, conversely speaking, if the total amount of a given article group greatly exceeds the size of the publication area (paper space), the above-described conventional article arrangement apparatus must find an appropriate layout. Is not possible. In other words, in such a case, it is necessary to adjust the total amount of articles to be published by deleting articles that are not so important, or by deleting articles that are not important in one article, and so on. No consideration is given to such cases in the device. That is, the above-described conventional apparatus has a problem that it is not possible to perform flexible layout adjustment including selection of articles and modification of the contents of individual articles. For this reason, in the above-described conventional device, in such a case, it is necessary for the editor to intervene to determine the deletion or correction of the article.

In the editing of newspapers and the like, articles are created each time in consideration of the amount of articles to be published, so that it is unlikely that there are too many article groups of article candidates for the article area. However, in the editing of publications using the article database, a group of articles to be published is not prepared assuming individual publications in advance, but rather, articles that can be used from the article database are selected as publication candidates. Therefore, such a case is quite likely. Therefore, in order to realize a publication editing system using an article database, it is extremely important to realize a flexible automatic layout adjustment function including selection and correction of articles.

In the above, the use of an article database has been described as an example. However, preparing a large number of articles as publication candidates in advance for layout adjustment is a conventional general method that does not use electronic database processing. This is often done at the editing site. An automatic layout adjustment function including selection of articles is desired even in such a conventional editing site.

The present invention has been made to solve such a problem, and an apparatus for automatically realizing an appropriate article layout in consideration of selection of articles and correction of individual article contents. The purpose is to provide.

[0011]

In order to solve the above-mentioned problems, an article layout device according to the present invention receives an article storage unit for storing a plurality of articles each having an article importance set, and receives designation of a publishing area. A publishing area designating section and a group of articles to be supplied are laid out in the publishing area. A simulation unit to be evaluated, and a simulation control unit that selects a plurality of articles from articles stored in the article storage unit and supplies the selected articles to the simulation unit. The supply of articles was repeated, and in this iteration, the best overall evaluation was obtained in the simulation section. And a simulation control unit for outputting the resulting final layout obtained layout result.

[0012] In this configuration, the article importance is set for each of the publication candidate articles stored in the article storage unit. The simulation control unit repeatedly selects an article group while changing the combination from among the article groups of the publication candidates, and causes the simulation unit to perform a layout simulation of the selected article group. The simulation section comprehensively evaluates the layout result of each round from both the typesetting aspect and the importance level of the laid-out article.

The evaluation value for the typesetting can be obtained based on, for example, the amount of protrusion or lack of the layout result in the posting area. In this case, the time when the layout result fits exactly in the posting area is the time when the typesetting evaluation value is the best. If the posting area is configured hierarchically, such as when the posting area extends over multiple pages or when columns are arranged in columns, the typesetting evaluation is performed for each layer area, such as page units, column units, etc. It is preferable to perform the overall typesetting evaluation by integrating the typesetting evaluations of the layers. The typesetting evaluation does not necessarily need to be obtained by actually typesetting. Based on information on the size and shape of the posting area, the number of characters in each article, the size of photos, the typesetting style, etc., it is possible to estimate the typesetting result to a certain extent, so that evaluation based on such estimation is sufficient enough for practical use There is.

The evaluation of the article importance is performed based on the importance of each article used in the layout result. This evaluation may be determined based on the importance of the article deleted during the layout among the candidates prepared in the article storage unit. Both are basically equivalent. The evaluation value is good if articles with high importance are laid out, and the evaluation value is bad if candidate articles with high importance are deleted.

In this configuration, every time a layout simulation is performed, a comprehensive evaluation of both the typesetting and the article importance is performed. Then, among the layout results obtained by repeating the simulation many times, the best one of the comprehensive evaluation is output as the final layout result.

As described above, according to this configuration, it is possible to automatically evaluate the quality of the selection of articles by incorporating the evaluation of the layout result based on the importance of the articles. Therefore, even when it is necessary to select an article, a good layout result can be automatically obtained.

[0017] In a preferred aspect of the present invention, the simulation control section determines the number of articles in each simulation based on a comparison between the average article volume of articles of the publication candidate stored in the article storage section and the size of the publication area. The range of the number of articles selected from the storage unit is determined. The range of the number of articles that can be laid out is determined to some extent based on the average article amount and the size of the posting area. Therefore, by performing a simulation using only that range, useless simulation can be reduced.

In another aspect, the simulation control section selects articles in descending order of importance,
Good layout results can be obtained with a small number of simulations.

In a further preferred aspect, the simulation section repeatedly lays out the article groups supplied from the simulation control section while changing the order, and obtains an evaluation value of the layout result for each repetition. Since the layout result in each case where the order of the supplied article group is changed is further examined, the possibility of obtaining a more suitable layout result increases.

In a preferred aspect of the present invention, the article layout device includes: an article database storing a group of articles;
An article search unit that receives specification of search conditions and searches the article database for articles that satisfy the search conditions;
An article importance assigned to each article searched by the article search unit in accordance with a user's designation, and stored in the article storage unit in association with the assigned article importance. Have.

According to this aspect, the article importance can be assigned to each article at the stage of searching for an article as a candidate for publication from the article database. Article importance can be assigned to each article.

Further, in a preferred embodiment of the present invention, each article itself is structured as a structured document in which a plurality of elements are hierarchically structured, and each element is given an element importance, so that an article unit is provided. An appropriate layout result can be obtained in consideration of not only selection of elements but also selection of elements.

According to another aspect of the present invention, when an article including an image such as a photograph or an illustration is laid out in a margin adjacent area of a publishing area during a simulation, the layout in which the image is protruded into the margin area may be used. Try. The margin adjacent area is a part of the printing area adjacent to the margin area of the page (a margin outside the printing plate). In typesetting, an image is allowed to have a layout that extends beyond the margin area. Therefore, in this embodiment, when an article including an image comes in the margin adjacent area, the case where the image is laid out with the image protruding into the margin area is also evaluated, thereby increasing the possibility of obtaining a more appropriate layout result. ing.

In another embodiment, even when an article including an image located in an area other than the margin adjacent area in the publication area is replaced with an article located in the margin adjacent area, the layout and the overall evaluation of the result are performed. .
When laying out an article including an image, if the original size of the image is larger than the size of the place (for example, the width of a column), it is necessary to reduce or trim the image. However, reduction or trimming may not be desirable depending on the image. In this aspect, the result of laying out an article including an image by replacing it with another article in the margin adjacent area is also evaluated, so that an appropriate layout can be obtained even when it is not preferable to change the size of the image.

[0025]

Embodiments of the present invention (hereinafter referred to as embodiments) will be described below with reference to the drawings.

FIG. 1 is a functional block diagram showing the configuration of an embodiment of an article layout apparatus according to the present invention.

In FIG. 1, an article DB (database)
In 10, various articles created in the past are registered. In the present embodiment, SGML (Standard Generalized
The usability of articles is enhanced by creating a database of structured articles described using a document structured description language such as Markup Language. In this embodiment,
An “article” refers to a single unit including not only the text but also images such as headlines, photographs, and illustrations. FIG. 2 is a diagram illustrating a description example of one article registered in the article DB 10. In this example, the article of the tourist spot is SGM
L, and in addition to "name", "headline", "text", various elements such as "access" method and "telephone number", and various elements such as "photo" (document elements as well) Say) has a hierarchical structure. “Photo” is described in the form of a file reference. Note that various explanations have been issued for the description format of SGML, and a description thereof will be omitted.

In the article DB 10, it is preferable not only to structure the internal elements of individual articles, but also to group and structure articles using common properties. For example, for sightseeing spot articles, municipalities, prefectures,
Searching becomes easier if articles are grouped in a local unit and hierarchized.

The article search unit 12 receives a search condition from a user, and stores an article satisfying the search condition in the article DB 10.
Search from. For example, to edit the eastern part of Kyoto city in a Kyoto tourist information magazine, the user inputs a search condition such as "address (location) is Higashiyama-ku or Sakyo-ku, Kyoto-shi ...". When the article group is hierarchized for each district level, the article search unit 12 can easily perform this search. Also, individual elements included in each article can be used as search keys.

The importance assigning section 14 assigns an article importance to each article searched by the article searching section 12. That is, the importance assigning unit 14 displays the retrieved articles, and the user determines the content of each displayed article, determines the article importance, and inputs the determined article importance to the importance assigning unit 14. For example, a method is conceivable in which the importance is represented by a positive integer, and the more important the article, the larger the value. In this case, so-called “filled” articles that have almost no problem even if they are deleted are set to a priority of “1”, and mandatory articles that must be published are “10000”.
For example, it is sufficient to set a large importance far exceeding a normal importance value. In addition, importance is "required",
You may be comprised so that it can select from several levels, such as "can be deleted" and "for layout adjustment." In this case, at the time of subsequent evaluation, the level is converted into a numerical value to obtain an evaluation value. The importance assigning unit 14 stores the thus set article importance in the candidate article storage unit 16 in association with the corresponding article.

FIG. 3 is a diagram showing an example of the contents stored in the candidate article storage section 16. The data of the searched article is registered in the item "article" in the table, and the item "article importance"
Is registered with the article importance set for the article. The article layout simulation is executed for the article group stored in the candidate article storage unit 16.

The posting area designating section 18 receives designation of a posting area from a user. The posting area is specified by, for example, the size of the paper, the number of pages, and the like. Alternatively, a configuration may be adopted in which an image of a page (or a group of pages) is displayed on the graphical user interface, and the boundary of the posting area is specified for the image of the page. The publication area designating unit 18 also accepts a basic typesetting style as information about the publication area.
As the typesetting style related to the layout simulation, for example, there are a margin amount, the number of columns, a character size, a character feed, a line feed, and the like.

In the present embodiment, the layout of the article group stored in the candidate article storage unit 16 is simulated for the publication area designated in this way, and a good layout is obtained. This simulation is executed by the simulation control unit 20 and the layout simulation unit 22. Simulation control unit 20
Controls the entire simulation process and selects a good layout result to be finally output. That is,
The simulation control unit 20 firstly stores the candidate article storage unit 1
6, an article to be laid out in the publishing area is selected at random or according to a predetermined rule from the group of articles of publishing candidates stored in 6, and is supplied to the layout simulation unit 22. Then, a result of the processing performed by the layout simulation unit 22 is received in response thereto. Such processing is repeated a predetermined number of times, and the best layout result or a predetermined number of good layout results in the repetition are selected and output. The layout simulation unit 22 lays out a group of articles supplied from the simulation control unit 20 in the publication area, and evaluates the layout result (simulation result).
Then, the layout result and its evaluation value are notified to the simulation control unit 20. Hereinafter, processing procedures of the simulation control unit 20 and the layout simulation unit 22 will be described with reference to FIGS.

FIG. 4 is a flowchart showing the processing procedure of the simulation control unit 20. The simulation control unit 20 acquires the information of the publication area from the publication area designation unit 18 (S10). Further, the simulation control unit 20 obtains the article amount of each article by referring to the candidate article storage unit 16, and obtains an average value per article (referred to as an average article amount) (S12). The article amount is the size of the article, and is represented by, for example, the number of lines in the publication area. If the typesetting style (paper size, number of columns, character size, etc.) and the number of characters in an article are known, it is possible to estimate how many lines the article covers on a page or a column.
Headlines and photos are also converted to the number of lines, etc., and incorporated into the article volume.

Next, the simulation control unit 20 executes S1
The range of the number of articles to be selected at the time of the simulation is determined based on the information on the size of the publishing area (total number of pages or the total number of columns, etc.) acquired at 0 and the information on the average article amount acquired at S12 (S14). For example, if it is known that the size of the publication area is about n times the average article volume, that is, about n articles can be published, the range of the number of articles to be selected is (n-α) to (n + α). α is a positive integer). Here, the value of α may be a fixed value, but is preferably determined based on the degree of dispersion (such as dispersion) of the article amount of the article group stored in the candidate article storage unit 16. As described above, by preliminarily limiting the range of the number of articles to be selected in the simulation based on the publication area and the amount of articles of publication candidate articles, useless simulation can be reduced.

When the range of the number of articles to be selected is obtained, the simulation control unit 20 starts a simulation processing loop. In the following simulation example, as shown in FIG. 6, a typesetting style of a type in which articles smaller in size than a page are sequentially poured into a multi-level page will be described as an example.

In this example, the simulation control unit 20 performs a simulation in the range of the number of selected articles from (n-α) to (n + α), for example, in ascending order of the number of selected articles. When the simulation for the combination is achieved, the number of selected articles is increased by one and the simulation is repeated.

In such a flow, the simulation control unit 20 selects articles for the number of selected articles from the candidate article storage unit 16 (S16), and supplies these to the layout simulation unit 22 (S18). The selection of the articles may be random, of course, but if the articles are selected in descending order of importance, useless simulation can be prevented, which is efficient. Therefore, it is preferable that the article groups stored in the candidate article storage unit 16 be sorted in the order of the article importance.

As shown in FIG. 5, the layout simulation section 22 acquires articles from the simulation control section 20 (S30), and sequentially lays out these articles in the posting area to lay them out (S32).

Then, the layout simulation section 2
2 evaluates the result of the layout (S34).
In the present embodiment, the evaluation of the layout result is performed from both the typesetting and the article importance levels.

For the typesetting evaluation, various typesetting evaluation methods known in the art can be used. For example, the amount of protrusion or lack of the layout result posting area occupies a large weight in the typesetting evaluation. If the amount of protrusion or shortage is large, the typesetting evaluation value decreases. If the posting area extends over a plurality of pages, the typesetting evaluation value will also deteriorate if a layout that impairs the beauty of the typesetting, such as the last few lines of the article being placed on the next page.
Also, at one stage, if there are too many blank lines in the layout result, the typesetting evaluation value becomes worse. The overall typesetting evaluation value of the layout result is obtained by integrating the typesetting evaluation values at each level of the publication area.

The evaluation of the article importance is performed based on the article importance of each laid out article (that is, selected from the candidate article storage unit 16). For example, the sum of the article importance of each laid-out article may be used as the evaluation value of the article importance. Alternatively, a sum of squares or sum of squares of the importance of each laid out article may be used as the evaluation value. In addition, instead of the importance of the laid-out article, the evaluation value may be determined based on the article importance of each article that has not been laid out (that is, not selected from the candidate article storage unit 16).

In this embodiment, the layout simulation is repeated while changing the order of the articles. However, during this time, the importance of each article to be laid out does not change, so that the evaluation value relating to the article importance does not change. Therefore, the evaluation value relating to the article importance need only be performed once each time an article group is given from the simulation control unit 20. On the other hand, the typesetting evaluation value must be obtained every time the order of articles is changed.

The layout simulation section 22 combines the evaluation value for the typesetting and the evaluation value for the article importance calculated in this way to calculate a comprehensive evaluation value for the layout result. Then, the simulation control unit 20 is notified of the comprehensive evaluation value together with information on the layout result (for example, represented as typesetting data) (S36).

The layout simulation section 22 performs the above-described layout simulation and evaluation processing for all the orders while changing the arrangement order of the article groups given from the simulation control section 20. In the present embodiment, articles are poured into the posting area in the order of arrangement.
The result of the layout at 32 changes. After the notification of the layout result (S36), it is determined whether or not the processing has been completed for all the sorting orders (S38) to repeat the processing for all the sorting orders (S38). The order is changed to the order which has not been tried (S40), and the processing of S32 to S36 is repeated. S
In 38, if it is determined that the processing for all the arrangement orders has been completed, the layout simulation unit 2
2 notifies the simulation control unit 20 that the simulation for the received article group has been completed (S42), and ends the processing.

The simulation control unit 20 acquires the layout result and the value of the comprehensive evaluation value notified by the layout simulation unit 22 (S36), and stores them in association with each other (S20). Then, the simulation control unit 20 notifies the completion of the simulation processing from the layout simulation unit 22 (S42).
Is received, it is checked whether or not all article selections have already been completed (S22). If not, the procedure returns to S16 to select an article group with a new combination and repeats the processing described above.

If it is determined in S22 that all the articles have been selected, the simulation control unit 20 determines whether the layout simulation unit 2 has been selected.
From among the layout results received from 2, the one with the best overall evaluation value is selected as the final layout result,
Output from the output unit 24 (S24). The output unit 24 is a device that outputs a layout result in the form of an image, such as a display device or a printing device. As a result, for example, a layout result as shown in FIG.

Since the number of layout simulations is quite large, all simulation results (ie, layout results and their comprehensive evaluation values)
Is stored in the simulation control unit 20, the cost may be high in terms of storage capacity. The following method can be considered as a method of reducing the capacity required for storing the simulation result. That is, a storage area for one simulation result is secured, and each time the simulation control unit 20 receives a simulation result from the layout simulation unit 22, the total evaluation value and the total evaluation value of the simulation result stored in the storage area are obtained. And if the newly received simulation has a better overall evaluation value, the newly received simulation result is overwritten in the storage area.

The preferred embodiment of the present invention has been described above. As described above, according to the present embodiment, it is possible to automatically evaluate the quality of the article selection method by evaluating the layout result in terms of article importance. In addition, since the layout result is also evaluated on the typesetting surface, even when the amount of individual articles is not uniform, a good layout result can be obtained from the typesetting surface. Thus, according to the present embodiment, the amount of articles is significantly larger than the posting area,
Even when articles need to be selected, it is possible to automatically obtain good layout results.

In the above description, only one layout result having the best overall evaluation value has been output. However, whether the layout result is good or bad is ultimately determined by human eyes. Even if the comprehensive evaluation value obtained mechanically is not the best, there may be a layout result that, if a little human intervention is performed, the quality is better than the layout result having the best overall evaluation value. Therefore, not only the layout result of the best overall evaluation value but also a plurality of layout results in descending order of the overall evaluation value may be output as layout candidates. The user can obtain a desired layout result by selecting a layout candidate that matches the user's image from the plurality of layout candidates and making appropriate corrections.

In the above procedure, the evaluation of the layout result is performed by the comprehensive evaluation of the evaluation relating to the typesetting and the evaluation relating to the article importance. However, the overall evaluation including the evaluation relating to the sorting of the articles may be performed. It is suitable. For example, 2
In some cases, two articles are closely related in content, and it is not preferable to lay them out at a distance from each other. Further, there may be a case where a user wants to lay out a specific article at the top of the posting area. In such a case, such a condition regarding the order of the articles is set at the same time, for example, when the importance assigning unit 14 assigns the article importance to each article. Then, when evaluating the layout result, the layout simulation unit 22 determines how much the condition regarding the order of the articles is satisfied, and obtains an evaluation value regarding the rearrangement of the articles. In this way, by evaluating the sorting of articles,
Further, it is possible to select an appropriate layout from various aspects.

In the above description, the article importance is given to the article when the article is searched from the article DB 10. However, the invention is not limited to this. For example, the article importance may be set for each article in the article DB 10. Good. Similarly, designation of the order of articles can be described in advance in each article in the article DB 10.

In the above description, the range of the number of articles to be selected at the time of the simulation is determined in S14. However, there are cases where the user wants to specify the upper limit of the number of articles that may be deleted from the publication candidate articles. obtain. The present embodiment can cope with such designation as a matter of course. That is, the range of the number of articles to be selected may be determined from the upper limit of deletion specified by the user.

[Modification 1] In the above description, the article importance is given to the articles, and selection is made on an article basis at the time of layout. However, each article itself is structured as shown in FIG. If so, the layout can be adjusted by selecting each element in the article.

For example, in the example of FIG. 2, various items such as "opening hours / garden hours" and "holiday" are registered as "detailed information" of the sightseeing spots, but it is not always necessary to list all these information. Absent. Which items are posted depends on the editorial policy. Also, photographs and illustrations, etc., do not necessarily have to be included just because they are included in the article data. This also depends on the editorial policy. When aiming to create a visual space, it is better to post images as much as possible. On the other hand, if you want to improve the information, it is better to cut down photos and publish as many articles as possible. In addition, even if the same photograph etc., it is desirable to post a photograph of a famous sightseeing spot as much as possible.

In the present modification, a more appropriate layout result can be obtained in consideration of the importance of each individual element (referred to as element importance).

The importance of the element may be given by the importance giving section 14 at the same time when the article importance is given. That is, when assigning an article importance while confirming the content of the article searched by the article search unit 12, the user may determine and input the importance of each element of the article. Here, each item of the heading and detailed information in the example of FIG.
For elements having the same degree of importance as information among all articles, it is desirable that element importance can be assigned collectively as a whole. Conversely, it is desirable that elements having different positions in each article, such as photographs, can be individually assigned importance. It is also preferable to delete an element determined not to be included in the editing policy when assigning the element importance.

In the layout simulation, a simulation is first performed in a state where no elements are deleted, and if none of the layout results obtained is satisfactory, the element having the lowest element importance is selected. Is deleted from each article stored in the candidate article storage unit 16, and the simulation is performed again. Whether or not the layout result is satisfactory may be determined, for example, by setting a threshold value for the overall evaluation value and comparing the overall evaluation value of the layout result with the threshold value.

In the re-simulation, in the overall evaluation of the layout result, the element importance of the deleted element is added to the overall evaluation value. Also, when deleting an element,
For elements common to a plurality of articles, those elements are collectively deleted for each article. If only some of the articles are deleted, it becomes impossible to distinguish whether those elements originally had elements or were deleted. For example, if you delete the “parking lot” element,
Deleting only some of the articles could be misunderstood that there is no parking at those spots. In order to prevent such a situation, it is necessary to collectively delete common elements from all articles.

If a satisfactory layout result cannot be obtained even in the simulation in which the element with the lowest element importance is deleted, the element with the next lowest element importance is deleted and the simulation is performed. In this way, until a satisfactory simulation result is obtained, the simulation is repeated while changing the elements to be deleted in order of decreasing importance. If satisfactory results cannot be obtained by deleting one element, the simulation is performed by increasing the number of elements to be deleted to two or three, and the above processing is performed until a satisfactory simulation result is finally obtained. repeat. In this process, the simulation control unit 20 selects an element to be deleted.

When a satisfactory simulation result is obtained in this way, a layout result having the best overall evaluation value is output.

As described above, according to this modification, it is possible to obtain an appropriate layout result in consideration of the possibility of deleting the element level.

[Modification 2] Next, a modification for improving the layout in consideration of the characteristics of the composition of a photograph or an illustration will be described.

(1) In composition, photographs and illustrations can be laid out outside the margin area of a page, unlike texts and headings. If a photo or the like extends outside the margin area and is laid out, the amount of articles that can be laid out in the publication area increases by that amount, and the overall layout changes. For example, in FIG.
The photo 102 is laid out outside the margin area. If this is laid out without protruding into the margin area, the photograph 102 is moved to the next (right) stage. This influence spreads to the layout of the next article and thereafter, for example, the photograph 104 cannot be laid out on this page.

Therefore, in this modified example, when an article having a photograph or the like comes in an area adjacent to the margin area at the time of the layout simulation, the photograph or the like is laid out by protruding into the margin area. The layout results are obtained and evaluated for both cases where no protrusion is performed. This processing is performed in the layout simulation unit 22.

If a good layout result can be obtained by such a process due to the protrusion of a photograph or the like, it can be obtained.

(2) If the width of a photograph or the like stored in the article DB 10 is larger than the width of the column to be posted, it is necessary to reduce or trim the layout. However, depending on the photograph or illustration, there is a case in which it becomes hard to see when the image is reduced, or an important portion disappears when the image is trimmed due to the composition or the like, so that it becomes meaningless to publish the image. It is not a problem to delete such photos if they are originally of low importance, but if they are of high importance, deleting them is likely to adversely affect the quality of articles. . In such a case, it is necessary to devise a method of laying out a photograph or the like as much as possible without reducing or trimming it.

Therefore, in this modified example, in the case of a layout simulation, when an article coming to an area that is not adjacent to the margin area includes a photograph or the like whose width is larger than the step width and reduction or trimming is not preferable. Performs the following processing. That is, first, the layout result when the photograph or the like is deleted and its evaluation value are obtained, and then the article itself is replaced with another article arranged in the area adjacent to the margin area, and the layout is redone, and the layout result is redone. And the evaluation value.

In the example shown in FIG. 6, when a photograph having a large width and an unpreferable reduction or the like comes to the middle stage,
The article including the photograph is replaced with the article at the right end or the left end where the photograph can protrude in the horizontal direction, and the layout in which the photograph protrudes into the margin area is performed. A photograph 106 in FIG. 6 is an example of a photograph laid out outside the right margin area.

By such a process, an evaluation value is obtained in any case where it is better to delete a photo, or in a case where it is better to post a photo or the like even if the positions of articles are exchanged. be able to.

Note that attribute information about a photograph, such as that reduction / trimming is undesirable, is, for example, the article DB10.
What is necessary is just to include it in the description about the photo etc. of the article concerned in advance.

The preferred embodiment of the present invention and its modifications have been described above. Note that the article layout device described above is typically constructed as software using a general-purpose computer system. That is, the apparatus of the present embodiment can be realized by causing a computer to execute a program describing the functions and processing procedures of each unit shown in FIG. In this case, the program is supplied in the form of a recording medium such as a floppy disk or CD-ROM or via a communication line,
This can be executed, for example, by installing this in a fixed disk device attached to a computer.

[0073]

As described above, according to the present invention,
Incorporating the evaluation of the layout results based on the importance of the articles makes it possible to automatically evaluate the quality of the article selection method, and automatically provides a good layout even when it is necessary to select the articles The result can be obtained.

[Brief description of the drawings]

FIG. 1 is a functional block diagram showing a configuration of an embodiment of an article layout device according to the present invention.

FIG. 2 is a diagram illustrating a description example of one article registered in an article DB.

FIG. 3 is a diagram illustrating an example of storage contents of a candidate article storage unit.

FIG. 4 is a flowchart illustrating a processing procedure of a simulation control unit.

FIG. 5 is a flowchart illustrating a processing procedure of a layout simulation unit.

FIG. 6 is a diagram illustrating an example of a layout result.

[Explanation of symbols]

10 article DB (database), 12 article search section,
14 importance imparting section, 16 candidate article storage section, 18 publication area designating section, 20 simulation control section, 22
Layout simulation unit, 24 output units.

Claims (9)

[Claims] An article storage unit for storing a plurality of articles each having an article importance set, a publication area designating unit for receiving a designation of a publication area, and a group of supplied articles laid out in the publication area. A simulation unit that comprehensively evaluates the layout result based on the article importance of the laid-out article group and the typesetting evaluation value of the layout result for the publishing area; and a plurality of articles out of articles stored in the article storage unit. A simulation control unit that selects an article and supplies the article group to the simulation unit, and repeats the supply of the article group to the simulation unit while changing the combination of the selected articles; in this repetition, the simulation unit obtains the best overall evaluation. Simulation to output the layout result as the final layout result An article layout device comprising: 2. The article layout apparatus according to claim 1, wherein the publishing area is configured by combining a plurality of regions in a hierarchical manner, and the simulation unit lays out the region in each region of each hierarchy. An article layout apparatus for calculating a typesetting evaluation value of the set of articles in the area, and calculating a typesetting evaluation value of the entire publication area based on the typesetting evaluation value of each of the areas. 3. The article layout apparatus according to claim 1, wherein the simulation control unit compares the average article amount of the articles stored in the article storage unit with the size of the publication area. An article layout device, wherein a range of the number of articles to be selected from the article storage unit is determined based on the selected article, and an article is selected within this range. 4. The article layout apparatus according to claim 1, wherein said simulation control unit preferentially selects an article having a high article importance. . 5. The article layout apparatus according to claim 1, wherein the simulating section repeatedly lays out the supplied article group while changing the order of the article group, and repeats the layout for each iteration. An article layout device for obtaining an evaluation value of a layout result. 6. The article layout device according to claim 1, wherein an article database storing article groups, and an article that satisfies a search condition, receives an article satisfying the search condition. An article search unit for searching from the article database, for each article searched by the article search unit, assigning an article importance according to a user specification, and associating each article with the assigned article importance; An article layout device comprising: an importance assigning unit to be stored in a storage unit. 7. The article layout device according to claim 1, wherein the article is a structured document in which a plurality of elements each having an element importance set are hierarchically structured. The simulation control unit has a function of instructing the simulation unit of an element to be deleted, and the simulation unit deletes the instructed element to be deleted from each of the supplied articles and lays out the element. And an article layout apparatus that performs an evaluation in consideration of the element importance of the deleted element in the overall evaluation of the layout result. 8. The article layout device according to claim 1, wherein the simulation unit lays out an article including an image in a margin adjacent area in the publishing area when laying out the supplied article group. An article layout apparatus, which also executes a layout when the image protrudes into a margin area, and performs a comprehensive evaluation of the layout result. 9. The article layout apparatus according to claim 1, wherein the simulating unit, when laying out the supplied article group, includes an article including an image located in an area other than a margin adjacent area in the publishing area. An article layout apparatus that performs a layout and comprehensive evaluation of the result even when the article is replaced with an article located in the margin adjacent area.