Abstract: A method and system for specifying alternate layouts of a user interface element of a display description is provided. In one embodiment, a display system provides a display description language that separates the definition of content of a user interface element from the layout of the user interface element. This separation allows alternate layouts to be specified that are conditionally applied to content of the user interface element without having to repeat the content. In another embodiment, the display system allows each element of a table to be positioned within a specific cell within the table.

Abstract: A records filter filters database records based on general and/or specific filter criteria. The records filter is effectively utilized in the context of a mail merge process in a document editor, such as a word processor application. The records filter can be provided to a user in the form of a graphical user interface that allows the user to intuitively set and modify filters to process the database records from a database source file. The graphical user interface permits a user to implement general and specific filters to process the records of a database. Specific filters can be designed to exclude specific records from the list of database records. Specific record exclusion can be performed by enabling a user to select or de-select a checkbox associated with each database record. General database record filtration is performed by processing general filter criteria input from the user.

Abstract: A “UI producer” is used to automatically instantiate extensible user interface (UI) windows. The automatically instantiated UI windows are based on dynamic definitions of those UI's. These UI definitions, which include descriptions of controls or other elements used to populate one or more UI windows, are read and interpreted by the UI producer prior to rendering the UI windows. In addition, these UI definitions may also define or reference one or more event handlers or “listeners” that are to be associated with particular controls, groups of controls, or entire UI windows so that the controls or UI windows are capable of interacting with an associated application. After reading the UI definitions, the UI descriptions are acted upon to automatically instantiate each UI window using at least one database of predefined controls and custom elements, with automatic layout rules being used to organize controls and elements within each UI window.

Abstract: An application programming interface (API) for submitting a richly-formatted text selection or document to a remote machine translation server for translation is provided. A software application program, such as a word processor, requests from a redirector server, the uniform resource locator (URL) of a remote machine translation server. All formatting, images, including pictures, drawings and the like, and other data objects not requiring translation are saved in a temporary file. The word processing software application opens an instance of an Internet browser, and the Internet browser submits the text selection to the remote machine translation server via the Internet, an intranet, or other distributed computing environment. The machine translation server translates the text selection and returns the translated text selection to the Internet browser at the client level.

Abstract: A records filter filters database records based on general and/or specific filter criteria. The records filter is effectively utilized in the context of a mail merge process in a document editor, such as a word processor application. The records filter can be provided to a user in the form of a graphical user interface that allows the user to intuitively set and modify filters to process the database records from a database source file. The graphical user interface permits a user to implement general and specific filters to process the records of a database. Specific filters can be designed to exclude specific records from the list of database records. Specific record exclusion can be performed by enabling a user to select or de-select a checkbox associated with each database record. General database record filtration is performed by processing general filter criteria input from the user.