Real World XML

Chapter 14. XSL Formatting Objects

In the previous chapter, we took a look at the XSL transformation language. In this chapter, we'll take a look at the second half of XSL: formatting objects.

The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) has defined formatting objects as root, block, and character that support different properties such as font-weight, line-height, and border. Using these predefined objects, you can specify the exact formatting for a document. At the time of this writing, there are 56 formatting objects and 177 properties that apply to these objects. Each of these objects has its own XML tag, and the properties it supports are attributes of that tag (many of these properties come from CSS2).

Like other XML applications, XSL formatting ...