Sams Teach Yourself XML in 21 Days

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Sams Teach Yourself XML in 21 Days, 3rd Edition

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Recommended Book

Recommended Book 

Sams Teach Yourself XML in 21 Days, 3rd Edition

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Using XSL Formatting Objects and Properties

Each of the 56 XSL-FO formatting objects has a corresponding element that you use in XSL-FO documents. Here they are:

• <fo:bidi-override> — Lets you overrides the default Unicode bidirectionality algorithm.
• <fo:block> — Creates a display block on its own line.
• <fo:block-container> — Creates a block-level container.
• <fo:character> — Accesses characters.
• <fo:color-profile> — Creates a color profile.
• <fo:conditional-page-master-reference> — Creates a page master that is used when the specified conditions are met.
• <fo:declarations> — Lets you group global declarations together.
• <fo:external-graphic> — Embeds an inline image in a document.
• <fo:float> — Lets content position float.
• <fo:flow> — Creates content flow.
• <fo:footnote> — Creates a footnote citation as well as the associated footnote.
• <fo:footnote-body> — Holds the content of a footnote.
• <fo:initial-property-set> — Formats the first line of a block.
• <fo:inline> — Creates an inline formatting area.
• <fo:inline-container> — Creates an inline container.
• <fo:instream-foreign-object> — Inserts an image or another binary object into an output document.
• <fo:layout-master-set> — Creates a set of masters.
• <fo:leader> — Creates a rule, a row of repeating characters, or a repeating pattern of characters.
• <fo:list-block> — Formats a list.
• <fo:list-item> — Contains the label and the body of a list item.
• <fo:list-item-body> — Contains the content of the body of a list item.
• <fo:list-item-label> — Contains the content of the label of a list item.
• <fo:marker> — Together with <fo:retrieve-marker>, creates headers and/or footers.
• <fo:multi-case> — Is used in a <fo:multi-switch> element for objects that may be displayed or hidden.
• <fo:multi-properties> — Lets you switch between property sets.
• <fo:multi-property-set> — Creates a set of formatting properties.
• <fo:multi-switch> — Lets you switch between formatting objects.
• <fo:multi-toggle> — Is used in an <fo:multi-case> element to switch to another <fo:multi-case> element.
• <fo:page-number> — Inserts the current page number.
• <fo:page-number-citation> — References the page number for a page that contains a citation.
• <fo:page-sequence> — Creates a sequence of pages within a document.
• <fo:page-sequence-master> — Contains sequences of page masters and is used to create sequences of pages.
• <fo:region-after> — Creates a footer.
• <fo:region-before> — Creates a header.
• <fo:region-body> — Creates the body of a <fo:simple-page-master>.
• <fo:region-end> — Creates a sidebar to the right of the page body.
• <fo:region-start> — Creates a sidebar to the left of the page body.
• <fo:repeatable-page-master-alternatives> — Creates a subsequence made up of repeated alternative page masters.
• <fo:repeatable-page-master-reference> — Creates a subsequence of single page masters.
• <fo:retrieve-marker> — Is used with <fo:marker> to create headers or footers.
• <fo:root> — Contains all the other XSL-FO document elements.
• <fo:simple-link> — Contains the start position in a simple link.
• <fo:simple-page-master> — Creates a page, which may be divided into up to five regions.
• <fo:single-page-master-reference> — Creates a subsequence made up of one single-page master.
• <fo:static-content> — Holds elements that must be presented as formatted, not in a flow.
• <fo:table> — Creates a table.
• <fo:table-and-caption> — Formats both the data and caption of a table.
• <fo:table-body> — Contains the table body.
• <fo:table-caption> — Contains a block-level caption for a table.
• <fo:table-cell> — Creates a table cell.
• <fo:table-column> — Formats a table column.
• <fo:table-footer> — Creates a table footer.
• <fo:table-header> — Creates a table header.
• <fo:table-row> — Creates a table row.
• <fo:title> — Creates a title for a document.
• <fo:wrapper> — Contains inherited properties for a group of objects.

You use these formatting objects with the 177 formatting properties. Many of the formatting properties are the same one you saw on Day 8, "Formatting XML by Using Cascading Style Sheets," such as background-color and background-repeat. And as in CSS, you can use measurements such as px for pixels, pt for points, and mm for millimeters when you need to specify a size. The following are a sampling of the XSL-FO formatting properties (for all the properties, see http://www.w3.org/TR/xsl/slice7.html):

To see how to use these objects and properties, the following sections dissect the example you've already worked with today.