XSL-FO documents are XML files with output information. XSL-FO documents are XML files with output information. They contain information about the output layout and output contents. XSL-FO documents are stored in files with a *.fo or a *.fob extension. It is also quite normal to see XSL-FO documents stored with the *.xml extension, because this makes them more accessible to XML editors.

XSL-FO needs formatting software to produce output. An XSL-FO processor is a software program for formatting XSL documents for output. Most XSL-FO processors can output PDF document, and quality print as well as HTML and other formats.

XSL-FO uses page templates called "Page Masters" to define the layout of pages. XSL-FO uses page templates called "Page Masters" to define the layout of pages. Each template must have a unique name.

XSL-FO is about formatting XML data for output. Before you study XSL-FO you should have a basic understanding of XML and XML Namespaces.

XSL-FO uses rectangular boxes (areas) to display output. The XSL formatting model defines a number of rectangular areas (boxes) to display output. All output (text, pictures, or whatever) will be formatted into these boxes and then displayed or printed to a target media.

XSL is a language for expressing stylesheets. It consists of three parts: XSL Transformations (XSLT): a language for transforming XML documents, the XML Path Language (XPath), an expression language used by XSLT to access or refer to parts of an XML document. (XPath is also used by the XML Linking specification). The third part is XSL Formatting Objects: an XML vocabulary for specifying formatting semantics. An XSL stylesheet specifies the presentation of a class of XML documents by describing how an instance of the class is transformed into an XML document that uses the formatting vocabulary.

Arved Sandstrom, release co-ordinator for FOP, has announced a major new release of the Apache XSL formatting objects processor.

Fabio Giannetti of HP has created WH2FO, a Java application to transform from Word 2000 HTML output to XSL Formatting Objects.

XSL Formatting Objects are an XML dialect; why not render them to HTML by an XSLT stylesheet? What you see below is the first attempt to materialize this idea. It is created and maintained by RenderX development team as an add-on to our principal product, XEP.

This is a list of basic Help for Using XML, XSLT, and XSL-FO.

This section covers some useful Q/A about XSL-FO.

Bertrand Delacrétaz writes with news of jfor, a Java-based XSL-FO formatter that outputs RTF. Jfor is currently early-stage technology, at version 0.4, and does not yet have full support for XSL-FO. It is, however, usable for text, tables and images. A wrapper to use jfor with Cocoon 1.8 is available, and work ongoing on integration with Cocoon 2.

This intermediate-level tutorial shows advanced techniques for working with XSL Formatting Objects (XSL-FO) for formatting data, such as handling lists and tables, creating complex documents with multiple layouts, adding repeating elements, and converting HTML elements to formatting objects and thence to PDF documents. Examples include XSLT templates, FO samples, and PDF output files, all processed in Java with the Apache XML Project's Xalan XSLT processor and FOP (Formatting Objects to PDF) tool.

"An Introduction to XSL-FO" is a lecture-style tutorial introducing the concepts of the Extensible Stylesheet Language Formatting Objects (XSL-FO) W3C Recommendation http://www.w3.org/TR/xsl, used for expressing the paginated (e.g. printed) output of XML structured information. The course overviews the formatting model and the basic principles behind the vocabulary as described in the W3C Recommendation. The objectives of the course are to understand the role and utility of the standard, be introduced to the components of the vocabulary, and to identify available documentation and resources.

jfor (*) converts XML documents conforming to the XSL-FO specification to RTF format, the goal being to use the same XSL-FO documents (as often generated using XSLT transforms) to generate PDF (using FOP or similar) and RTF (using jfor) documents.

"Practical Formatting Using XSL-FO" overviews the Extensible Stylesheet Language Formatting Objects (XSL-FO) http://www.w3.org/TR/xsl W3C Recommendation, used for the paginated presentation of structured information (e.g. printing XML). The objectives of the course are to understand the role and utility of the Recommendation, to overview basic constructs of the Recommendation, to design and develop XSL-FO scripts using XSLT and XPath (both of which are assumed to already be known by the attendee), and to efficiently navigate the available documentation and resources.

This page contains a list of testcases used to debug XEP. In an ensemble, they produce a reasonable coverage of XSL Formatting objects related to printed media. Not all the tests are rendered equally well by the engine; some are still unsupported - partially or in a whole. See XEP product page for links to the documentation.

The refined formatting object tree describes one or more intended presentations of the information within this tree. Formatting is the process which converts the description into a presentation. See [3 Introduction to Formatting]. The presentation is represented, abstractly, by an area tree, as defined in the area model. See [4 Area Model]. Each possible presentation is represented by one or more area trees in which the information in the refined formatting object tree is positioned on a two and one-half dimensional surface.