What Is XSL (eXtensible Stylesheet Language)

This section describes XSL (eXtensible Stylesheet Language), which is a language introduced as a W3C Recommendation to help users to process XML source documents to be presented in different styles of devices in two steps: transformation and formatting.

What Is XSL (eXtensible Stylesheet Language)? XSL is a language introduced as a W3C Recommendation to help users to process XML source documents to be presented in different styles of devices in two steps:

Below is diagram that illustrates this XSL 2-step process:

XSL 2-Step Process: Transformation and Formatting

More specifically, XSL provides recommendations in 3 areas:

1. Formatting Objects (XSL-FO) - A language allows you to describe formatting objects as an XML document for visual presentation in different styles.

2. Transformation guidelines - A set of recommendations on how to transform XML source document into XSL-FO documents. This should be done by applying XSLT (Extensible Stylesheet Language Transformations) documents on the original XML source document. XSLT is a separate W3C Recommendation.

3. Formatting guidelines - A set of recommendations on how to interpreting XSL-FO documents of formatting objects to produce the final presentation file.

Versions of XSL:

XSL 1.0 - Published on October 15, 2001
XSL 1.1 - Published on December 5, 2006
Roadmap: To be replaced by CSS3-paged

Table of Contents

 About This Book

Introduction of XSL-FO

What Is XSL (eXtensible Stylesheet Language)

 What Is XSLT (XSL Transformations)

 What Is XSL-FO (XSL - Formatting Objects)

 hello.fo - Sample XSL-FO document

 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

 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