Document Top Level Structure Rules

XSL-FO Tutorials - Herong's Tutorial Examples

∟Document Top Level Structure Rules

This section describes XSL-FO document top level structure rules. Root element must be 'root'. 'layout-master-set' is required to define page layouts. 'page-sequences' or 'page-sequences-wrapper' is required to define page contents.

If you want to write an XSL-FO (XSL Formatting Objects) document to define formatting objects for visual presentation, you need to follow the following XSL-FO document structure rules.

1. XSL-FO document must be valid XML document with "http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Format" as the namespace.

2. The root element must be "root" acting as the XSL-FO formatting objects container.

3. Sub elements of the "root" element are:

A single required "layout-master-set" element to define page layouts.
A single optional "declarations" element.
A single optional "bookmark-tree" element.
At least one or more "page-sequences" or "page-sequence-wrapper" elements to define formatting objects to be presented on pages.

Here is an outline of an XSL-FO document structure:

<fo:root xmlns:fo="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Format">
 <fo:layout-master-set>
  ... Required element to define page layouts
 </fo:layout-master-set>

 <fo:declarations>
  ... Optional element to hold global declarations
 </fo:layout-master-set>

 <fo:bookmark-tree>
  ... Optional element to hold bookmarks
 </fo:layout-master-set>
 
 <fo:page-sequence>
  ... Presentation objects to be formatted on a sequence of pages
 </fo:page-sequence>
 <fo:page-sequence-wrapper>
  ... Container of page-sequence and/or page-sequence-wrapper
 </fo:page-sequence-wrapper>
  ... Required at least one page-sequence or page-sequence-wrapper

</fo:root>