This thesis discusses automatic pagination applicable to a publication where a collection of pieces of information with varying sizes and shapes and without any strict sequential order is presented in page-like visual entities. The previous description portrays a generalization of newspaper. The medium of presentation may be paper, fax, TV or computer screen. The content may be derived or produced in a number of different ways, such as written by humans or compiled as a result of a database query or a World Wide Web search.
A pagination system where automatic pagination might be applied can be described as a publishing system for the generalized newspaper. It has the following properties:
Automatic pagination systems might be an answer to the paper publications struggling with high production costs and need for increased speed of production. In addition to traditional newspapers, automatic pagination might be applied to pagination of newspapers delivered by fax or in electronic newspapers, including ones that contain hypermedia properties, as well as in visualization of database queries and WWW search results. Furthermore, the pagination problem is studied here in such a general level that the methods are applicable to other similar problems as well.
Simulated annealing is a stochastic optimization method based on the statistical mechanics of cooling solids. It has previously been applied to large combinatorial problems, typically including some types of layout problems in VLSI design and cutting metals. It is thus a tempting method to apply to the layout problem within automatic pagination.