Talk:XSL Formatting Objects

History and Future
I think we need such a section. (By the way, are there any official information about the future of XSL FO? Thanx!) --LinuxEdit0r (talk) 05:01, 12 January 2008 (UTC)

Element Reference
Can we create a list of XSL-FO elements and attributes on Wikipedia (such as at XSF-FO/1.0/Element_Reference or something similar), with syntax, explaination, examples, problems, tips & compatibility? I'd be willing to start compiling this, but I do not know if that would be an incorrect use of Wikipedia. I think it would be good to have a list at an easiy-accessible place like this, with users experiences of problems as well. --MBread 19:54, 20 May 2006 (UTC)


 * I wouldn't guess that this would be a good use of Wikipedia. That's more for an XSL-FO dedicated Wiki. This article should explain in rather broad terms what XSL-FO is. Korval 02:49, 26 May 2006 (UTC)


 * Maybe a list of XSL-FO elements could be part of a section about the topic in WikiBooks. -- Jimj wpg 18:43, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

XSL-FO basics: comparison with HTML/CSS
I'm about to remove the sentence


 * As such, a person wanting to generate a printed document only has to select the FO processor that fulfills their needs, usually in the realm of layout quality and reduction of unnecessary whitespace, rather than having to test their XSL-FO document on multiple processors.

since it seems self-evident that if one wants to print something then one needn't test multiple processors, except to the extent that that doing so is involved in selecting an FO processor that fulfills one's needs.

I will replace it with a sentence saying that distributing the final pdf rather than the formatting language input (whether HTML/CSS or XSL-FO) means on the one hand that users aren't affected by differences among formatting language interpreters, while on the other hand means that the document cannot easily adapt to different users' needs (different page size or preferred font size, tailoring for on-screen versus on-paper versus audio presentation). —Preceding unsigned comment added by Pjrm (talk • contribs) 08:30, 19 May 2010 (UTC)

XSL-FO language concepts: page-centricness
The existing initial paragraph:


 * The XSL-FO language was designed for paged media, in much the same way that HTML and CSS were designed for unpaged (or screen-based) media. As such, the concept of pages is an integral part of XSL-FO's structure, and FO gives the user significant power in dealing with how information is displayed on a page.

has the following issues:


 * I don't understand the point of the fragment “in much the same way that HTML and CSS were designed for unpaged (or screen-based) media”. One issue with the fragment is that it's of questionable truth: CSS was from its very beginning (i.e. from the first version carrying that name) intended to apply to languages other than HTML, presumably including paged media; certainly, CSS2.1 provides explicit features for paged media, and CSS3 goes considerably further (see modules css3-page and css3-gcpm).


 * Can that fragment simply be replaced with ‘(as distinct from a single-paged scrolled representation on screen, or an audio representation)’ ? Or is the paragraph trying to say that XSL-FO has more powerful page-related placement directives than does HTML/CSS, and that this is a result of being designed only for paged media?


 * The claim that “FO gives the user significant power in dealing with how information is displayed on a page” seems meaningless: the word ‘formatting’ already conveys that FO gives power in how information is displayed, and it's already been said that all displaying is on a page. Was it intended to say that FO gives power of specification of where on a page information is displayed?

For the moment, I'll simply remove these two fragments. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Pjrm (talk • contribs) 10:04, 19 May 2010 (UTC)

XSL 2.0
What about mentioning something about future? Seems like there is a 2.0 draft ready since 2008???--Kozuch (talk) 08:35, 1 November 2012 (UTC)