Patent US 5,459,826

A method and system for locally organizing and laying out text and pictorial material for a page to be printed at a remote facility provides a layout template having a fixed grid pattern, and plural layout elements which are organized across the grid pattern corresponding to the page to be printed. Each element contains an area for text or pictorial material. A predetermined code is assigned to each layout element, with regard to whether the element contains text, photographs, or both. A predetermined code is assigned to each layout element and represents the area of the element with respect to the grid pattern of the template. A representation of the organized layout elements is generated and transmitted to the remote facility, where the pictorial and text elements are correlated and merged together to provide an output data stream representative of the page to be printed.