What Is XSL Area Model

This section describes XSL-FO area model, which is a key concept used by XSL to organize and render formatting objects as a tree of areas on the presentation medium.

What Is Area Model? - Area model is a key concept used by XSL to organize and render formatting objects as a tree of areas on the presentation medium. The XSL area model has the following main features:

Area? - A rectangular area with formatting properties on the presentation medium that represents a unit of formatted information. Multiple smaller areas can be put together to create a larger area.

Area Stacking - A sequence of areas of the same type that are stacked either inline-wise, called Inline-Stacking, or block-wise, called Block-Stacking, to create a new area.

Inline Stacking - A process of stacking formatted information areas inline-wise to form a new area like a line. For example, in English writing style, glyph areas are stacked one by one horizontally from left to right to form a new line of text.

Block Stacking - A process of stacking formatted information areas block-wise to form a new area like a page. For example, in English writing style, paragraph areas are stacked one by one vertically from top to bottom to form a new page area.

Area Tree - An ordered tree of areas to represent a large area constructed with a group of smaller areas. Form example, a page area can be represented as area tree with a stack of paragraph areas as its child nodes. Each child node, a paragraph area is a stack of line areas as it child nodes. And so on.

The diagram below illustrates how a page area can be represented as an area tree, where first level child nodes represent the paragraph area stack to construct the page area. Second level child nodes represent line area stacks to construct individual paragraph areas.

XSL-FO Area Model and Area Tree
XSL-FO Area Model and Area Tree

Table of Contents

 About This Book

 Introduction of XSL-FO

 Apache™ FOP (Formatting Objects Processor)

 RenderX XEP as an XSL-FO Tool

Introduction of Area Model

What Is XSL Area Model

 What Is an Area

 Inline Stacking and Block Stacking

 XSL-FO Document Basics and Examples

 Page Layout Masters

 Block-Level Formatting Objects

 Inline-Level Formatting Objects

 Including Graphics in XSL-FO document

 Table of Rows and Columns

 List, Item, Label, and Body

 Floating Blocks - "float" and "footnote"

 Hyperlinks, Table of Contents and Indexes

 Headers and Footers using "static-content"

 Font Attributes and Font Families

 Apache FOP Font Configurations

 RenderX XEP Font Configurations

 Converting HTML to PDF

 References

 Full Version in PDF/ePUB