Publishing with XML - Herong's Tutorial Examples - v4.02, by Dr. Herong Yang
What Is XSL-FO (XSL Formatting Objects)
This section provides a brief introduction of the XSL-FO (XSL Formatting Objects) technology.
XSL-FO: An XML based markup language that defines how the embedded information should be formatted for viewing or printing. XSL-FO is very similar to TeX, which was a very popular language 15 years ago for writing well formatted scientific documents.
Main features of XSL-FO:
1. XSL-FO is XML based. So an XSL-FO document is also an XML document.
2. XSL-FO documents requires to an XSL-FO processor to comile them into new output formats that are suitable for viewing or printing. Common XSL-FO output formats are text, PDF and PS files.
3. XSL-FO can be embedded inside XSL transformation stylesheet files. In this case, the content source XML file will be processed in 2 steps in order to get the viewing or printing output files:
The 2-step process can be viewed as in this diagram:
Content source (XML format) | | XSLT stylesheet with XSL-FO statements | | | v |<- XSLT transforming | v Content with XSL-FO statements (XML format) | |<- XSL-FO processing | v Printing document (PDF format)
Table of Contents
Ideas on Publishing Books using XML
Overview of hyPub - A Simple XML Publishing Tool
Writing Book Contents in XHTML Source Files
Transforming Book Source Files with XSL Technology
Designing Web Page Layouts with Tables
Controlling Web Page Appearance with CSS
Sharing HTML Codes with JavaScript Files
Generating Web Pages with hyPub
►Formatting Printable Documents with XSL-FO
►What Is XSL-FO (XSL Formatting Objects)
Example of XSL-FO Document - hello.fo
Installing Apache FOP - XSL-FO Processor
Formatting XSL-FO Files to Text Files Using FOP
Formatting XSL-FO Files to PDF Files Using FOP
Formatting XML Files to PDF Files with XSLT
Tranforming XML Files with XSLT Stylesheets