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 comparing component quality criteria values of a training layout with corresponding component quality criteria values of an input layout; and 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.