Patent ID: 7890855

Claim:
A computer-implemented method for separating and processing layout information and data of a document, wherein the document describes an interface to an application, the method comprising the steps of: receiving a predefined document description with an attribute, the attribute comprising a default attribute value and a data path having a plurality of elements; decomposing the document description into a layout template and a data description by extracting the layout template and the data description from the document description using a style sheet language transformation, the layout template containing a placeholder linking to corresponding data, and the data description containing the default attribute value and a plurality of tags corresponding to the data path elements, the decomposing further comprising: detecting the attribute in the document description; inserting, for data path elements of the attribute, corresponding tags in the data description, wherein the tags are arranged hierarchically in the data description; and inserting the default attribute value in the data description at a lowest hierarchical level of the tags; and storing the layout template and the data description in different locations.