What Is "block-container" Formatting Object?

This section describes block-container formatting object, which is a wrapper of blocks to have more controls on area size, writing-more and reference-orientation.

What Is "block-container" Formatting Object? "block-container" is a block-level formatting object that wraps blocks into a bigger block area with additional attributes to control its size, writing-mode, reference-orientation, etc. Its content is limited to a sequence of blocks only.

A "block-container" formatting object has the following main attributes:

Here is my tutorial example, Block-Container-with-Width.fo that has a "block-container" formatting object with width specified:

<?xml version="1.1" encoding="utf-8"?>
<!-- Block-Container-with-Width.fo
 - Copyright (c) 2006 HerongYang.com. All Rights Reserved.
-->
<fo:root xmlns:fo="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Format">
 <fo:layout-master-set>
  <fo:simple-page-master master-name="page" 
   margin="0.1in" page-height="4in" page-width="3in">
   <fo:region-body region-name="body" background-color="#eeeeee"/>
  </fo:simple-page-master>
 </fo:layout-master-set>
 <fo:page-sequence master-reference="page">
  <fo:flow flow-name="body">
   <fo:block-container width="1.1in" reference-orientation="90">
    <fo:block margin="0in" padding="0.1in"
     space-before="0.1in" space-after="0.1in" 
     border-width="1px" border-style="solid" 
     background-color="#ffeeff" font-weight="bold">
     The Three Little Pigs
    </fo:block>
   </fo:block-container>
   <fo:block margin="0in" padding="0.1in"
    space-before="0.1in" space-after="0.1in" 
    border-width="1px" border-style="solid" 
    background-color="#eeffff" text-align="justify">
    Once upon a time there were three little pigs who lived 
    with their Mother.
    Early one morning they woke up and their mother said, 
    "you're too big for this house and its time you left home."
   </fo:block>
   <fo:block border-width="1px" border-style="solid"/>
  </fo:flow>
 </fo:page-sequence>
</fo:root>

When you process the above sample XSL-FO document to a PDF file and open it, you will see that the first block is shorter with text orientation rotated:

Block Container with Fixed Width
Block Container with Fixed Width

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

 XSL-FO Document Basics and Examples

 Page Layout Masters

Block-Level Formatting Objects

 What Are Block-Level Formatting Objects

 What Is "block" Formatting Object?

 "block" Formatting Object Examples

 Margin Collapsed between Block Areas

 space-before/space-after vs. Margin

 Block Splitting for Page Break

 "block" with Mixed Content

 Controlling White Space Characters

What Is "block-container" Formatting Object?

 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