XSL-FO Areas

XSL-FO uses rectangular boxes (areas) to display output.

XSL-FO Areas

The XSL formatting model defines a series of rectangular areas (boxes) to display output.

All output (text, images, etc.) is formatted into these boxes, and then displayed or printed to a target medium.

Let's look at the following areas:

  • Pages
  • Regions
  • Block areas
  • Line areas
  • Inline areas

XSL-FO Pages

XSL-FO output is formatted into pages. Print output is usually divided into many separate pages. Browser output often becomes a single long page.

XSL-FO Pages contain regions.

XSL-FO Regions

Each XSL-FO page contains a series of regions:

  • region-body (the body of the page)
  • region-before (the header of the page)
  • region-after (the footer of the page)
  • region-start (left sidebar)
  • region-end (right sidebar)

XSL-FO Regions contain block areas.

XSL-FO Block Areas

XSL-FO Block Areas define small block elements (usually starting on a new line), such as paragraphs, tables, and lists.

XSL-FO Block Areas contain other block areas, but most of the time they contain line areas.

XSL-FO Line Areas

XSL-FO Line Areas define lines of text inside block areas.

XSL-FO Line Areas contain inline areas.

XSL-FO Inline Areas

XSL-FO Inline Areas define text within a line (emphasis marks, single characters, images, etc.).


Other Extensions