XSL-FO zone properties

XSL-FO zone

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

XSL-FO zone

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

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

Let's look at these areas:

• Pages (Pages)
• Regions
• Block areas (block areas)
• Line areas (row area)
• Inline areas (in-row area)

XSL-FO Pages (Page)

The XSL-FO output is formatted into a page. P rintouts are usually divided into many split pages. Browser output often becomes a long page.

XSL-FO Pages (page) contains regions.

XSL-FO Regions

Each XSL-FO page contains a series of Regions:

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

XSL-FO Regions contain Block Areas.

XSL-FO Block Areas (Block Area)

XSL-FO Block Areas define small block elements, usually starting with 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 (Row Area)

XSL-FO Line Areas defines lines of text inside the block area.

XSL-FO Line Areas (row area) contains in-row areas (Inline Area).

XSL-FO Inline Areas (in-line area)

XSL-FO Inline Areas (in-line areas) define the text inside the line (emphasis numbers, single characters, images, and so on).

Through this section, you learn about the role and properties of the XSL-FO region, and in the next section, we'll take a look at the XSL-FO output.