Patent ID: 7900154

Claim:
A method of selecting a layout for a user interface for a display in an electronic device, comprising: obtaining a first data structure comprising linked conceptual components representing said user interface in a plurality of nodes, said conceptual components comprising: a second data structure for labels identifying said conceptual component objects; a vector parameter containing array data associating said labels to said conceptual component objects; and a set of directions representing a layout of said displayed elements in said user interface and being mapped to each dimension of said vector parameter, and; said conceptual components selected from one of: a container component defining frame objects relating to parent objects in common frames in said user interface and having a set of child conceptual components defining child elements in said common frames; a control component defining control objects used to generate input selections relating to said displayed elements in said user interface; and a text component defining text entry objects used to process text entries relating to said displayed elements in said user interface; and a third data structure comprising one of: said set of child conceptual components if a node of said plurality of nodes is said container component; an input selection template, if said node is said control component, that allows a user to perform selections, comprising a label data structure providing selection domain and identifiers; and a text field template, if said node is said text component, that allows text to be entered by a user for said element; generating a plurality of parses of the user interface by traversing said first data structure to combine pairs of conceptual components areas or groups of conceptual components areas; for each parse of said plurality of parses, measuring a suitability of said each parse, wherein said suitability is based on suitability factors; and choosing a suitable parse from said plurality of parses based on scores relating to said suitability factors.