THE XML REVOLUTION - TECHNOLOGIES FOR THE FUTURE WEB

XSL Formatting Objects

XSL-FO provides exact and detailed layout control
it resembles e.g. LaTeX, but is XML based
recall that HTML/XHTML has different goals: the exact look of an HTML/XHTML page is decided by the browser, not by the author

A small example:

<?xml version="1.0"?> 
<fo:root xmlns:fo="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Format"> 

  <fo:layout-master-set> 
    <fo:simple-page-master master-name="my-page">
      <fo:region-body margin="1in"/>
    </fo:simple-page-master>
  </fo:layout-master-set>

  <fo:page-sequence master-name="my-page"> 
    <fo:flow flow-name="xsl-region-body"> 
      <fo:block font-family="Times" font-size="14pt">
        <fo:inline font-weight="bold">Hello</fo:inline>, world!
      </fo:block> 
    </fo:flow>
  </fo:page-sequence>

</fo:root>

layout masters define the page layout
pages are grouped into page sequences
flow objects bind contents to page regions
the actual contents is grouped in blocks
inside blocks, content fragments can be assigned inline properties

- XSL-FO documents are almost always created using XSLT!

XSL-FO is not supported by existing browsers, but can be tried out using FOP that translates into PDF.