XSLFO : Extensible Stylesheet Language Formatting Objects

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XSL-FO Extensible Stylesheet Language
Formatting Objects

• XSL-FO is an XML-based markup language describing
  the formatting of XML data for output to screen,
  paper or other media.
• XSL-FO became a W3C Recommendation 15. October
  2001

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XSL-FO

• Information about the physical size of the page
  (letter, A4, and so on)
• Information about margins (top, left, bottom, and
  right), running headers and footers, and other
  properties of the page
• Information about fonts, font sizes, colors, and
  other characteristics of the text
• The actual text to be printed, marked up with
  elements that describe paragraphs, highlighting,
  tables, and similar things

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Converting XML documents to PDF files

• Use an XSLT stylesheet to transform the XML
  document into a file of XSL-FO elements. To
  perform the transformation, you simply invoke the
  XSLT processor with the XML document and the
  stylesheet. (Part 2 of this tutorial includes an
  XSLT stylesheet that converts XHTML elements into
  formatting objects.)
• Use a rendering engine (for example, FOP, which
  is used in the tutorial examples) to convert the
  XSL-FO elements into a PDF file. This part is
  even simpler You just invoke the FOP tool,
  giving it the name of the XSL-FO file and the
  name of the PDF file.

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5

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Run FOP

• set classpath.d\fop-0.20.5\build\fop.jard\fop
  -0.20.5\lib\avalon-framework-cvs-20020806.jard\f
  op-0.20.5\lib\batik.jard\fop-0.20.5\lib\xalan-2.
  3.1.jard\fop-0.20.5\lib\xercesImpl-2.0.1.jard\
  fop-0.20.5\lib\xml-apis.jar
• java org.apache.fop.apps.Fop d\example\simple.fo
  d\example\simple.pdf

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The ltforootgt element

• The root element for an XSL-FO document is the
  ltforootgt element. The sample document defines
  the fo namespace prefix in this element
• ltforoot xmlnsfo"http//www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Form
  at"gt
• ... lt!-- Everything else in the document
  --gt ... lt/forootgt
• Typically, the root element contains a
  ltfolayout-master-setgt followed by one or more
  ltfopage-sequencegts.

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The ltfolayout-master-setgt element

• The ltfolayout-master-setgt element specifies page
  definitions
• In a simple document, one layout might be enough,
  but complex documents typically have several page
  definitions
• ltfosimple-page-mastergt element to define each of
  the page layouts you need then you store them in
  the ltfolayout-master-setgt element.

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• ltfolayout-master-setgt
• ltfosimple-page-master master-
• name"main" margin-top"36pt"
• margin-bottom"36pt" page-
• width"8.5in" page-height"11in"
  margin-
• left"72pt" margin-right"72pt"gt
• ltforegion-body margin-bottom"50pt"
  margin-top"50pt"/gt
• lt/folayout-master-setgt

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The ltfosimple-page-mastergt element

• The ltfosimple-page-mastergt element defines the
  layout for a particular page
• master-name Defines a name for this page master.
  You can create several different
  ltfosimple-page-mastergt elements and then refer
  to each of them as you need to use different page
  layouts throughout your document
• page-width and page-height Define the size of the
  physical page. This example defines a
  letter-sized page to use A4-sized paper, the
  attributes page-width"21cm" and
  page-height"29.7cm" would do the trick.

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Units in XSL-FO documents

• cm centimeters
• mm millimeters
• in inches
• pt points (72 points 1 inch)
• pc picas (12 points 1 pica, 6 picas 1 inch)
• px pixels (sometimes different from one formatter
  or device to the next, so be careful)
• em the width of a capital M

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• XSL-FO Pages contain Regions
• XSL-FO Regions contain Block areas
• XSL-FO Block areas can contain other Block areas,
  but most often they contain Line areas
• XSL-FO Line areas contain Inline areas
• XSL-FO Inline areas define text inside Lines
  (bullets, single character, graphics, and more).

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The ltforegion-bodygt element

• The XSL-FO spec defines five regions on a page
  region-body defines the dimensions of the main
  area in the center of the page
• region-before, the area at the top of the page
  (normally used for running heads)
• region-after, the area at the bottom of the page
  (normally used for running feet)
• region-start, the area to the left of the page
• region-end, the area to the right of the page

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Attributes of region-X

• region-name name of the region
• extent assignment value
• Margin-bottom, margin-left, margin-right,
  margin-top

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ltfopage-sequencegt element

• One or more ltfopage-sequencegt elements describe
  the page contents. The master-reference attribute
  refers to the simple-page-master template with
  the same name
• ltfopage-sequence master-reference"A4"gt
• lt!-- Page content goes here --gt
  lt/fopage-sequencegt

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• Fotitle (optional)
• ltfotitlegtmyxmllt/fotitlegt
• Similar to html title tag
• Fostatic-content( 0 or more)
• always appear at region-before or
  region-after.
• followed by ltfoblockgt
• Foflow (only one)

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The ltfoflowgt element

• The ltfoflowgt element defines some content that
  will be flowed within the current margins, font
  settings, and so forth
• ltfoflow flow-namebodygt
• Followed by the ltfoblockgt

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Block Area Attributes

• ltfoblockgt is the most basic element used to
  format a block of text.
• You can think of it as similar to the HTML ltpgt
  element.
• A ltfoblockgt element always causes a line break.
• ltfoblock font-size"14pt" line-height"17pt"gt
• ltfoblock text-align"center"gt

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• space-before
• space-before.minimum
• space-before.maximum
• space-before.optimum
• space-before.precedence
• space-afterspace-after.minimum
• space-after.maximum
• space-after.optimum
• space-after.precedence
• Ex. ltfoblock space-before"14pt"gt Put 14
  points of vertical space before the block begins

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• Border style attributes
• border-style
• border-before-style
• border-after-style
• border-start-style
• border-end-style
• border-top-style (same as border-before)
• border-bottom-style (same as border-after)
• border-left-style (same as border-start)
• border-right-style (same as border-end)

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• Border color attributes
• border-color
• border-before-color
• border-after-color
• border-start-color
• border-end-color
• border-top-color (same as border-before)
• border-bottom-color (same as border-after)
• border-left-color (same as border-start)
• border-right-color (same as border-end)

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• Border width attributes
• border-width
• border-before-width
• border-after-width
• border-start-width
• border-end-width
• border-top-width (same as border-before)
• border-bottom-width (same as border-after)
• border-left-width (same as border-start)
• border-right-width (same as border-end)

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• Font attributes
• font-family
• font-weight
• font-style
• font-size
• font-variant

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• Text attributes
• text-align
• text-align-last
• text-indent
• start-indent
• end-indent
• wrap-option (defines word wrap)
• break-before (defines page breaks)
• break-after (defines page breaks)
• reference-orientation (defines text rotation in
  90" increments)

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• keep-with-next
• keep-with-next.within-line
• keep-with-next.within-column
• keep-with-next.within-page
• keep-with-previous
• keep-with-previous.within-line
• keep-with-previous.within-column
• keep-with-previous.within-page
• keep-together
• keep-together.within-line
• keep-together.within-column
• keep-together.within-page
• Ex ltfoblock font-size"24pt" keep-with-next.with
  in-page"always"gt
• Always keep this block on the same page as
  the block that follows it

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ltfoinlinegt element

• ltfoinlinegt defines some new text properties
  within an existing ltfoblockgt
• Bold text Use the ltfoinlinegt element with an
  attribute of font-weight"bold".
• Italicized text Use the ltfoinlinegt element with
  an attribute of font-style"italic".
• Monospaced text Use the ltfoinlinegt element with
  an attribute of font-family"monospace".
• Changing fonts Use the ltfoinlinegt element with
  an attribute of font-family"serif"

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• ltfoflow flow-name"xsl-region-body"gt
• ltfoblock font-size"14pt"
  line-height"17pt"gt
• This is a paragraph of text. Notice that
  as
• ltfoinline font-style"italic"gtthis
  meaningless
• proselt/foinlinegt drones on and on, the
  FOP
• software automatically calculates line
  breaks for us.
• Isn't that fascinating?
• lt/foblockgt
• lt/foflowgt

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Fopage-number

• Initial-page-number
• Force-page-count odd, even, end-on-even,
  end-on-odd or auto
• Pageltfopage-number/gt

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ltfoexternal-graphicgt element

• ltfoexternal-graphic src"images/x.gif"gt
• The ltfoexternal-graphicgt element doesn't cause a
  line break by default. If you want the graphic to
  appear separately, put the ltfoexternal-graphicgt
  inside a ltfoblockgt.

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Drawing lines

• The XSL-FO spec also defines a ltfoleadergt
  element to draw lines in a document
• The valid values for the leader-pattern property
  are space, rule, and dots. The default value is
  space, meaning the ltfoleadergt element merely
  creates blank white space

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• ltfoblockgt
• ltfoleader leader-pattern"dots"/gt
• lt/foblockgt

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XSL-FO Tables

• The XSL-FO table model is not very different from
  the HTML table model
• There are nine XSL-FO objects used to create
  tables
• fotable-and-caption
• fotable lttablegt
• fotable-caption
• fotable-column ltcolgt
• fotable-header lttheadgt
• fotable-footer
• fotable-body lttbodygt
• fotable-row lttrgt
• fotable-cell lttdgt

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Fobasic-link

• ltfobasic-link
• external-destinationhttp//www.ncue.edu.t
  wgtncue
• lt/fobasic-linkgt

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Multiple pages

• Using fosimple-page-master to build the name of
  every page
• Then using fopage-sequence-master to decide the
  order of appearance
• The ltfopage-sequence-mastergt object specifies
  which simple-page-masters are to be used and in
  which order

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• ltfopage-sequence-mastergt
• lt!-- Contents(single-page-master-ref
  erence repeatable-page-master-reference
  repeatable-page-master-alternatives) --gt
• lt/fopage-sequence-mastergt

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• The ltfosingle-page-master-referencegt object
  holds a reference to a particular page-master to
  be used at a given point in the sequence of
  pages.
• Attribute master-reference

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• The ltforepeatable-page-master-referencegt object
  specifies repetition of a single
  simple-page-master.
• Attribute master-reference maximum-repeats

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• The ltforepeatable-page-master-alternativesgt
  object specifies repetition of a set of
  simple-page-masters.
• Attribute maximum-repeats

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• The ltfoconditional-page-master-referencegt object
  specifies a page-master to be used when the
  conditions defined are true.
• Three properties, page-position, odd-or-even,
  blank-or-not-blank, specifies the conditions. All
  three conditions must be true for the
  ltfoconditional-page-master-referencegt to be
  true.
• page-position is true if the generated page has
  the specified position (first, last, rest, any)
• odd-or-even is true if the value is "any" or if
  the value (odd, even) matches the page number
• blank-or-not-blank is true, if the value is
  "not-blank" and the page has areas generated by
  descendants of ltfoflowgt if the value is "blank"
  and the page has no areas from ltfoflowgt or if
  the value is "any"