1. A method, comprising: on a display, displaying a graphical user interface comprising a template design area; based on one or more commands received through the graphical user interface, arranging a layout of template elements with respective relative positions and sizes in the template design area, wherein at least one of the template elements is designated for receiving variable document content; through the graphical user interface from a user: receiving values of parameters characterizing one or more associated adaptive layout variables that constrain adaptability of respective ones of the template elements to different document content wherein the parameters characterizes a degree of variability about a mean value of the associated adaptive layout variable, grouping respective ones of the template elements into a template element group, and receiving a specification of an optimization path and path groups that define the logical relationships between the template elements; encoding the relative positions of the template elements in the template design area in association with the respective parameter values and the optimization path and path groups in a variable document template data structure; and displaying a graphic representation of the optimization path and path groups in the template design area; wherein the displaying, the receiving, the encoding and the displaying are performed by a computer system.
1. A method, comprising: on a display, displaying a graphical user interface comprising a template design area; based on one or more commands received through the graphical user interface, arranging a layout of template elements with respective relative positions and sizes in the template design area, wherein at least one of the template elements is designated for receiving variable document content; through the graphical user interface from a user: receiving values of parameters characterizing one or more associated adaptive layout variables that constrain adaptability of respective ones of the template elements to different document content wherein the parameters characterizes a degree of variability about a mean value of the associated adaptive layout variable, grouping respective ones of the template elements into a template element group, and receiving a specification of an optimization path and path groups that define the logical relationships between the template elements; encoding the relative positions of the template elements in the template design area in association with the respective parameter values and the optimization path and path groups in a variable document template data structure; and displaying a graphic representation of the optimization path and path groups in the template design area; wherein the displaying, the receiving, the encoding and the displaying are performed by a computer system. 9. The method of claim 1 , further comprising: based on one or more commands received through the graphical user interface from the user: grouping respective ones of the template elements into at least one other template element group, and generating for each other template element group a respective specification of a respective optimization path; and grouping multiple of the optimization paths into an optimization path group; wherein the encoding comprises designating the optimization paths in the optimization path group as a group of optimization paths whose associated adaptive layout variables are to be optimized jointly.