Hour14.Formatting XML with XSL-FO

Hour 14. Formatting XML with XSL-FO

You got it buddy: the large print giveth and the small print taketh away.

Tom Waits

As Tom Waits points out in the quote, the size of the print determines a whole lot about what you're getting into, at least when it comes to marketing. This chapter isn't about marketing but it does address print size. It's about XSL-FO, an XML stylesheet technology that is in some ways akin to a supercharged CSS. XSL-FO is the other half of the XML stylesheet equation, with XSLT being the original half that you learned about in Hour 11, "Getting Started with XSL," and Hour 12, "Transforming XML with XSLT." XSL-FO is a very high-powered style language that is particularly well suited to print. It allows you to take exacting control over every little detail of the printed page, including margins, headers, footers, and so on. XSL-FO could also be applied to the Web as a high-end replacement for CSS but browsers have yet to adopt it as a page formatting and layout standard. So, for now you have to consider XSL-FO as a technology primarily useful for print. Fortunately, there is a need for such a technology. This hour introduces you to the XSL-FO language, and how it is used to render highly formatted printed pages based upon XML code.

In this hour, you'll learn

• What XSL-FO is and how it came to be

• About the nuts and bolts of the XSL-FO language

• How to validate XSL-FO documents

• How to convert an XSL-FO document to a PDF document that can be viewed in Adobe Acrobat Reader