You can do everything in assembler
I first want to say that layout manager and such really is something that is old technology and already included in all modern gui's, but it is always good to just focus on a thing and think a little to see if things can be improved.
When drawing diagrams in powerpoint I always get very frustrated. the reason is that I believe that something like a well implementation of the tools found in the TeX community to draw diagrams, would be so much easier (for me). It would be so cool to be able to use the TeX tools to layout stuff in diagramming and gui construction. If you are like me I suggest to read and play with those TeX tools like xy-pic, great fun.
Let me also point out that QP is probably not used because simpler solutions then what I described is probably already implemented. The point using QP is that you can specify that not only X is close to Y, but allow the distance is allowed to vary if there is conflicting constraint(s). It is also a quite general framework if you stick to linear constructs. What I miss is a framework and tools, to handle and develop layout managers. There should simply be a tool for me and others who now the math (perhaps do it using scipy) to develop some great markup framework to do layout of different things. I could imagine it being based of QP and also of cause, as a special case Linear programming. One could think of including other mathematical tools as well like convex programming.
As an example let's discuss about implementing a tool to make sure that the layout has straight left and right margins. We stack a sequence of objects X1,X2,X3..., with a smallest distance d1,d2,d3,.. between X1,X2;X2,X3;..., And we also say that we punish a deviation from di by a coupling constants C1,C2,... basically you could automatically select Ci,di according to the sizes of objects (xy-pic in the TeX world has such ideas in it's layout strategy of diagrams.) Now to specify a conflicting constraint to let the total distance of the sequence to be constant in order to achieve a right margin. You never get an exact right margin, but by adjusting the spaces between words or objects you may make it happen. The good thing using this is that you will always get an answer and depending on measures how well every constraints is satisfied you can decide to remove objects to the next line or include new objects. Also you could fire up guis and let users who want to tweak the coupling constants, do it to adjust the layout.
Finally here is a trick I use to deduce the components in a quadratic criteria x'S'x + v'x + d from other representations without thinking. When I first tried to do this I went for the white board and started to deduce things by hand. well that is not needed. just define a function f(x) that is your definition of the criteria, that is most easy to define. Then use your computer to evaluate f(0), f(ei),i=1,..,n, f(ei+ej) i,j=1,..,n. Using this information you will be able to deduce S and v. I find this a very neat tool. It is written once and will save you ton's of time.
What I fear is that we mostly develop to make things simple for the less advanced users because most users are on that level which means that this is ok. Beeing an advanced user means that you don't get the benefit of most development and that means that you are not 10 times as effective but perhaps only 2 times and you loose.
Cheers