XML in a Nutshell, Third Edition

An XSL-FO document describes the layout of a series of nested rectangular areas (boxes, for short) that are placed on one or more pages. These boxes contain text or occasionally other items, such as an external image or a horizontal rule. There are four kinds of areas:

• Block areas

• Inline areas

• Line areas

• Glyph areas

Block and inline areas are created by particular elements in the formatting objects document. Line and glyph areas are created by the formatter as necessary. For the most part, the rendering engine decides exactly where to place the areas and how big to make them based on their contents. However, you can specify properties for these areas that adjust both their relative and absolute position, spacing, and size on a page. Most of the time, the individual areas don't overlap. However, they can be forced to do so by setting the properties absolute-position , left , bottom , right , and top .

Considered by itself, each box has a content area in which its content, generally text but possibly an image or a rule, is placed. This content area is surrounded by a padding area of blank space. An optional border can surround the padding. The size of the area is the combined size of the border, padding, and content. The box may also have a margin that adds blank space outside the box's area, as diagramed in Figure 14-1.

Text propertiessuch as font-family , font-size , alignment , and font-weight can be applied by attaching the appropriate properties to one of the boxes that contains the text. Text takes on the properties specified on the nearest enclosing box. Properties are set by attaching attributes to the elements that generate the boxes. With the exception of a few XSL-FO extensions, these properties have the same semantics as the CSS properties of the same name . Only the syntax for applying the properties to particular ranges of text is different.

The elements in the XSL-FO document do not map in a one-to-one fashion to the areas on the page. Instead, the XSL-FO document contains a slightly more abstract representation of the document. The formatting software uses the XSL-FO elements to decide which areas to create and where to place them. In the process, it will split the large blocks into smaller line and glyph areas. It may also split single block areas that the XSL-FO document describes into multiple block areas if a page break is required in the middle of a large block, although XSL-FO does let you prevent these breaks if necessary. The formatter also generates the correct number of pages for the content that's found. In short, the XSL-FO document contains hints and instructions that the formatter uses to decide where to place items on which pages, but you do not need to specify the exact position of each and every box.