XML in a Nutshell, 3rd Edition

The Structure of an XSL-FO Document

The root element of all XSL-FO documents is fo:root . This element normally declares the fo prefix mapped to the http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Format namespace URI. As always, the prefix can change as long as the URI stays the same. In this chapter, we assume that the prefix fo has been associated with http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Format. Thus, a typical FO document looks like this:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<fo:root xmlns:fo="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Format">
  <!-- Formatting object elements -->
</fo:root>

Of course, normally this isn’t written as directly as it is here. Instead, it’s formed by an XSLT template like this one:

<xsl:template match="/">
  <fo:root>
    <xsl:apply-templates/>
  </fo:root>
</xsl:template>

The fo:root element must contain two things: a fo:layout-master-set and one or more fo:page-sequence s. The fo:layout-master-set contains elements describing the overall layout of the pages themselves; that is, how large the pages are, whether they’re in landscape or portrait mode, how wide the margins are, and so forth. The fo:page-sequence contains the actual text that will be placed on the pages, along with the instructions for formatting that text as italic, 20 points high, justified, and so forth. It has a master-reference attribute identifying the particular page master that will be used to layout this content. Adding these elements, a formatting objects document looks like this:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> <fo:root ...