XSL-FO

Chapter 3. Pagination

Practical publishing projects start with a number of constraints. Unless you are experimenting, you will already know if your XML source is targeted at a book, an article, a business form, or a newsletter. In other words, the final product will be a concrete instance of what I will informally call document categories or document classes .

Decades and centuries of usage have established publishing conventions for many document classes. Many readers who have experience with at least one desktop publishing system or formatting software application will be familiar with standard document classes. These conventions suggest rules to be followed at all levels of the formatting process. It is at the pagination level, however, where the effect of these rules is most strongly felt. This chapter discusses XSL pagination — how to design pages and how to put them together.

Document Classes

The rules and conventions that apply to a given document class will determine the presence and structure of the three major divisions of any single document: the front matter , the main matter (probably most commonly known as the body), and the back matter . (These terms are generally used in connection with only certain types of documents. Because the concepts have more general utility, they will be extended to all documents.) The front matter obtains its fullest form in books and typically contains most of the following: a title page, a copyright page, a preface, a table of contents, ...