A guy by the name of Luca Cardelli wrote a paper on constraint-based
layout when he was working for DEC. Coincidentally, he was working for
Microsoft when I was pushing springs and struts. Here is his paper:

http://citeseer.ist.psu.edu/cardelli93building.html

Jeff;

On Wed, 9 Jun 2004 11:09:15 -0400, "Todd W Lainhart"
<lainhart@...> said:
> David Charlap <shamino@...> wrote on 06/09/2004 10:15:23 AM:
>
>
> >
> > And they wouldn't be able to patent it as their own. (For the same
> > reason Visix couldn't patent it - prior art.)
> >
>
> What was the prior art?
>
> -- Todd