XSL-FO

Appendix E. Inheritance Characteristics

This appendix simply lists those formatting objects that exhibit inheritance, based on Appendix C.2 of the specification.

Why is it worth including? To quote from the specification:

During refinement the set of properties that apply to a formatting object is transformed into a set of traits that define constraints on the result of formatting. For many traits there is a one-to-one correspondence with a property; for other traits the transformation is more complex.

And:

The first step in refinement of a particular formatting object is to obtain the effective value of each property that applies to the object. Any shorthand property specified on the formatting object is expanded into the individual properties. ... For any property that has not been specified on the object the inherited or initial value, as applicable, is used as the effective value.

This means some properties on an area that you specify are derived from the ancestors of the current node being formatted. The inheritable properties are propagated down the formatting object tree from a parent to each child. (These properties are given their initial value at the root of the result tree even if you don’t specify them.) For a given inheritable property, if that property is present on a child, that value of the property is used for that child (and its descendants until explicitly reset in a lower descendant).

The following lists show the inherited properties for the visual formatting objects. ...