Patent ID: 8171462

Claim:
A method, in a computer system, for processing source data, the method comprising: providing an authoring user interface; receiving one or more rules input by a user of the computer system via the authoring user interface, the one or more rules specifying valid formatting conditions for at least one text string to be displayed by a computer program to alert a user of the computer program to a status condition during execution of the computer program, the at least one text string comprising a string of one or more elements; generating, using the computer system, one or more constraints and one or more anchor points based on the one or more rules, each of the one or more anchor points specifying a position before a first element of the string, between two consecutive elements of the string, or after a last element of the string, and each of the one or more constraints specifying at least one valid formatting condition with which a portion of the string in a defined position relative to at least one of the anchor points must comply; projecting the one or more constraints onto a target string according to the one or more anchor points to determine, for each of the one or more constraints, whether the portion of the target string in the defined position relative to the corresponding at least one of the anchor points complies with the corresponding at least one valid formatting condition; and projecting the one or more constraints onto a translation of the target string according to the one or more anchor points to determine, for each of the one or more constraints, whether the portion of the translation of the target string in the defined position relative to the corresponding at least one of the anchor points complies with the corresponding at least one valid formatting condition.