This tutorial teaches the basics of XSL Formatting Objects (XSL-FO), a powerful, flexible XML vocabulary for formatting data, often used with XSLT to convert XML and HTML documents to PDF (portable document format). The first of a two-part series, it uses XSLT to convert XML documents into formatting objects and then the Apache XML Project's FOP (Formatting Object to PDF) tool to convert those objects into PDF files. Examples include XSL-FO sample code, XSLT templates, and Java processing commands.

FOP is the Apache hosted Open Source product that can be used to render documents marked up in XML to multiple rendering formats. The output formats include PDF, PCL and text. FOP processes XSL-FO compliant with the W3C recommendation and the PDF output is compliant with PDF Version 1.3 . Other desktop publishing output formats like MIF and RTF are also underway. FOP is the first of its kind which produces commercial quality print output with XSL formatting objects.

IBM's recently-released XSL Formatting Objects Composer (XFC) is "a typesetting and display engine that implements a substantial portion of XSL Formatting Objects (FO), which became a W3C Recommendation on October 15, 2001. XSL FO is an XML language for typesetting, printing, or displaying any of the world's written languages. XFC produces either an interactive onscreen display using Java2D or an output file using PDF.

EXSLT is a community initiative to provide extensions to XSLT. The extensions are broken down into a number of modules, listed below. We are trying to encourage the implementers of XSLT processors to use these extensions, so that your stylesheets can be more portable. If your XSLT processor doesn't support a particular extension, you can download packages that you can use to provide functions or templates for your stylesheets. Have a look at the How To... page for more details about how to use the packages.

XML documents will be transformed into XSL-FO (Formatting Objects) according to the rules described in the XSL stylesheet.

A FAQ about the XMLSPY application.

Here we have some answers to common questions about FOP. This only covers general information about getting started with FOP and pointers to more information.

XSLfast is first of all an editor for XSL:FO documents. Start XSLfast and begin to create and define your document, similar to what you do in work processing or desktop publishing software. Integrate folders into the software that later on can be replaced by your actual data. This can be used for mail merging, formats processing, catalogue production and other areas of publishing and cross media publishing applications.

xmlspy® 2004 includes the world's first visual XSL:FO designer to automate writing of complex XSL:FO Stylesheets through an intuitive, drag-and-drop user interface. XSL:FO is an XML-based document layout and formatting language, used to create PDF, PostScript, and numerous other common document formats from XML content. Simply open an existing XML Schema or DTD - the XML content model will appear on the left hand panel in a tree-like controller.

Apoc XSL-FO is the first commercially available XSL-FO document renderer for the Microsoft .NET platform. Apoc XSL-FO is a .NET component, written in 100% managed code, that renders XSL-FO XML documents directly to PDF.

V3 is a brand new formatting engine that has been developed to provide the ability to format a very large document at significantly faster speeds. XSL Formatter V3.1 offers all the features (GUI, support for over 50 languages, PDF generation), W3C compliance, extensions and formatting capabilities of our previous Version 2.5 plus the significantly enhanced performance, unlimited document size and SVG support.

This page presents a learn-by-example tutorial for XSL Formatting Objects. It is not an exhaustive reference on XSL FO, but rather an attempt to facilitate reading the XSL Formatting Objects specification by giving a series of commented basic examples.

Need portable documents that, unlike most XML documents, include representation information? This article introduces XSL-FO (XML Stylesheet Language-Formatting Objects) and explains how it can come to the rescue. To demonstrate the advantage of using XSL-FO, the article includes an example implementation of a database reporting system that uses Java and XML code.

The initial trait of this paragraph should be formatted using red 14 pt bold Helvetica font, while the rest of the text should be rendered in 12 pt normal black Times. The initial trait of this paragraph should be formatted using red 14 pt bold Helvetica font, while the rest of the text should be rendered in 12 pt normal black Times.

You've probably heard the propaganda by now: XML blesses you with a way to separate content from presentation. Separation in turn yields productive gains over HTML and other data formats used to manage content.

There are a number important concepts used in XSL-FO language:

When you are including graphic images in your documents, you need to manage the locations of the graphics files.It helps to know that the handling of graphics files is quite different for HTML and FO outputs.

In this article, you'll learn about XSL-FO and an example to convert XML into a PDF document. This article assumes that you have some familiarity with XML and XSLT.

The FO stylesheet may be used in conjunction with the Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) stylesheet such that presentations are displayed using SVG and printed using FO. They complement each other because SVG is visually more detailed, for example background styles, where as FO is less so, which makes it suitable for printing. Both stylesheets follow similar transformation logic.

Learn more about how to use Extensible Stylesheet Language Transformation (XSLT), a powerful language for working with data in Extensible Markup Language (XML) documents. Steven Holzner, author of New Riders’ Inside XSLT, captures the excitement and power of XSLT while showing you working examples that use XSLT processors you can download free. He shows you the full XSLT syntax - from the most basic to the most advanced - and digs into many of the ways XSLT is used today.