Inside Xslt
Formatting an XML Document
To see how XSL-FO can format XML data, Ill use planets.xml:
Listing 11.1 planets.xml
<?xml version="1.0"?> <?xml-stylesheet type="text/xml" href="planets.xsl"?> <PLANETS> <PLANET COLOR="RED"> <NAME>Mercury</NAME> <MASS UNITS="(Earth = 1)">.0553</MASS> <DAY UNITS="days">58.65</DAY> <RADIUS UNITS="miles">1516</RADIUS> <DENSITY UNITS="(Earth = 1)">.983</DENSITY> <DISTANCE UNITS="million miles">43.4</DISTANCE><!--At perihelion--> </PLANET> <PLANET COLOR="WHITE"> <NAME>Venus</NAME> <MASS UNITS="(Earth = 1)">.815</MASS> <DAY UNITS="days">116.75</DAY> <RADIUS UNITS="miles">3716</RADIUS> <DENSITY UNITS="(Earth = 1)">.943</DENSITY> <DISTANCE UNITS="million miles">66.8</DISTANCE><!--At perihelion--> </PLANET> <PLANET COLOR="BLUE"> <NAME>Earth</NAME> <MASS UNITS="(Earth = 1)">1</MASS> <DAY UNITS="days">1</DAY> <RADIUS UNITS="miles">2107</RADIUS> <DENSITY UNITS="(Earth = 1)">1</DENSITY> <DISTANCE UNITS="million miles">128.4</DISTANCE><!--At perihelion--> </PLANET> </PLANETS>
In this first example, I create an XSLT stylesheet to format planets.xml into planets.fo, which uses formatting objects to specify fonts, styles, and colors. Then I use the fop processor to convert planets.fo into planets.pdf, which you can see in Figure 11.1.
Figure 11.1. A PDF document created with formatting objects.
As you see in Figure 11.1, I use some text formatting in this first example: setting the font, underlining text, italicizing text, even setting text color. (Although you cant see it in Figure 11.1, the title, The Planets Table, is bright blue.)
The first step in creating Figure 11.1 is to use an XSLT stylesheet to transform planets.xml to planets.fo.