DESIGN ENGINE FOR AUTOMATIC LAYOUT OF CONTENT

A three-way separation of information in a document includes content, design and media aspects. This division supports automatic rendering to multiple forms of media such as print, Intranet, Internet, and OLE embedding. A method adds content to a composition having a chosen design and automatically calculates a layout for the composition. A content object is dropped upon a receiving component of the composition. The dropped content object has at least one potential type. A potential type of the content object is matched with a compatible type of the receiving component. Next, the design tree is modified to incorporate the content object, and media layout values are calculated for each content element of the composition The dropped content may change the existing content, may replace it completely, may be inserted into the existing content, may change its properties, or may result in new components being created in the design tree. If content is dropped in an incorrect location, a tree structure is used to determine where to place the content automatically. A content drop table data structure is used to assist in dropping content onto a composition. When a content object having potential dropped content types is dropped upon a component of the composition, a matching subcomponent type may be determined by reference to the content drop table.