1. A document layout system comprising: a candidate layout generator that constructs a plurality of candidate layouts for selected content; a layout quality tagger that tags the candidate layouts with overall layout quality criterion values using an overall layout quality criterion combining a set of component quality criteria as a weighted linear combination of kernels, each kernel corresponding to an inner product <φ(x k ), φ(x)> comparing component quality criteria values of a training layout with corresponding component quality criteria values of an input layout where x k denotes a vector representing the component quality criteria values for training layout k, x denotes a vector representing the component quality criteria values for the input layout, and φ denotes a non-linear vector transform selected to ensure that the inner product <φ(x k ), φ(x)> corresponds to a scalar value indicative of similarity between the values of the component criteria vector x k for the training layout k and the values of the component criteria vector x for the candidate layout.; a layout selector that selects a layout for the selected content from amongst the candidate layouts based on the tagged overall layout quality criterion values; and a trainer for training the overall layout quality criterion using the training layouts, the training adjusting weights of the weighted linear combination of kernels such that for an input training layout the overall layout quality criterion outputs a value substantially corresponding to a label assigned to the input training layout; wherein the candidate layout generator, layout quality tagger, and trainer are embodied by a computer.