Stylesheet Tutorial, Sample Files of
Formatting Objects and
Sample Stylesheets

The 80 page tutorial 2nd Edition developed by Antenna House for customers of XSL Formatter is made public adding the contents of indexes, functions for PDF creation, reference to appendix and much more substantial contents. This is not only useful for better understanding of XSL and XSLT but also this may be used as a practical sample of XML and XSLT stylesheet.

1. This is the source file of the tutorial.
2. The source file is an XML document based on "SimpleDoc.dtd".
3. This is the XSLT Stylesheet to transform the source XML file to XSL (XSL-FO) formatting objects tree.
4. You may download source files from here: ZIP file (about 270KB), revised July 26, 2005. Then you can format xml/Howtodevelop-en-2.xml and SimpleDoc/SD2FO-DOC.xsl using XSL Formatter by yourself.
5. The PDF format is available. PDF file (about 648KB), revised July 26, 2005.

These manuals contain operating instructions that explain how to use XSL Formatter and provides helpful information for first-time, as well as experienced, users. This is not only useful as a manual but also this may be used as a practical sample of XSL-FO document.

1. XSL Formatter V4.2 Online Manual in FO format as a zip file (about 944KB), revised Jan 11, 2008. You can format and print using XSL Formatter by yourself.
2. XSL Formatter V4.2 Online Manual in PDF format (about 3.3MB), revised Jan 11, 2008.

XSL Formatter V4.2 Online Manual is created using the specification of Extensible Stylesheet Language (XSL) Version 1.1.

The following sample files show the new features in the Extensible Stylesheet Language (XSL) Version 1.1 W3C Candidate Recommendation. They are all available for formatting and printing by our XSL Formatter V4.2.

• Writing Mode
• Change Bar
• Bookmark
• Indexing
• Multiple Flow
• Graphics Scaling
• Retrieve Table Marker
• Page Number Referencing

☞ Download all sample FO files as one lump package, revised September 4, 2007.

The following sample files show the typical functions of XSL (XSL-FO). They are all available for formatting and printing by our XSL Formatter. PDF files created by XSL Formatter are also available here. Though Acrobat Distiller is used in exceptional cases, it is identified in the explanation.

• Page Sequence
• Page Geometry
• Block Properties
• Character Properties
• Line Number, Page Number and Marker
• Graphics
• MathML Equations
• Block Container and Inline Container
• Table and List
• Automated PDF Generation
• Floats
• Revision Bar and Column Rule, etc.
• Color
• Miscellaneous Functions

☞ Download all sample FO files as one lump package, revised November 29, 2005.

XSL Formatter can format world languages that are written using Unicode. Beside of western languages, major Asian languages such as Japanese, Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese, Korean and Thai are supported. Those languages which are written from right to left, such as Arabic, Hebrew, are also supported.

Unicode BIDI algorithm and bidi-override function of XSL (XSL-FO) specification is supported, document that consists of mixed writing mode phrases in a paragraph can be formatted right.

The formatted result of XSL Formatter can be converted to PDF by using both of Abobe Distiller and PDF Output engine. XSL Formatter supplies you the global multilingual formatting solution.

☞ See the tutorial "Formatting World Languages" and multilingual formatting examples.

DITA (Darwin Information Typing Architecture) is an XML-based architecture for authoring, producing, and delivering technical information. The architecture and a related DTD was developed by IBM. DITA is organized around the principle of the topic as the highest level structure and is intended to support the reusability of content. It has been developed especially for managing a large set of documentation to be distributed in multiple channels.

DITA has grown well and its specification was defined by the OASIS DITA Technical Committee since 2004. DITA version 1.0 has been approved as an OASIS Standard on May 3rd, 2005.

Visit OASIS Darwin Information Typing Architecture (DITA) TC for more information.

Features of DITA

Antenna House DITAtoFO Stylesheet

The Internationalization (I18N) Support Java library is the LGPL open-source license developed by Innodata Isogen, Inc. Antenna House made some modifications to the original library and opened this library under the LGPL license according to the LGPL rule.

☞ Download I18N Support Library (about 5,694 KB).

The Innodata Isogen Internationalization (I18N) Support Library is a collection of Java classes that provide fundamental services to document processors for localizing and internationalizing the rendered form of XML documents.

The services provided include:

• Language and locale-specific static ("generated") text strings. Processors simply have to know what database key and language to ask for, the system then returns the appropriate language-specific string. Database keys can be element type names (e.g. "Chapter") or arbitrary strings (e.g., "#index").

• Language-specific comparators for doing language and locale-appropriate lexical sorting of strings (for example, with the xsl:sort command through Saxon). The generic "getComparator" functions can be bound to any implementation of the Java Comparator interface. The default Comparator implementation is that provided by the ICU4J package ( http://oss.software.ibm.com/icu4j/).

• Back-of-the-book index configuration management, making it easy to define and use language-specific index grouping and sorting.
• Functionality exposed as XSLT extension functions through Saxon's extension API.

The core functions (I18nService) are processor independent and can be bound to any specific processor through a relatively thin binding layer, as demonstrated by the provided Saxoni18nService class. For example, the I18nService can be bound to Epic Editor through it's Java API, other Java-based XSLT processors, or Java-based user interfaces, or DOM-based XML processors.

One method to generate PDF dynamic from your web page is to generate XHTML page, then transforms the XHTML to XSL-FO by using XHTML to XSL-FO stylesheet, and XSL-FO to PDF by using XSL-FO processor.

Stylesheets for XHTML

Sample XHTML files

Parameters

<!-- page size -->

<xsl:param name="page-width">auto</xsl:param>
<xsl:param name="page-height">auto</xsl:param>
<xsl:param name="page-margin-top">1in</xsl:param>
<xsl:param name="page-margin-bottom">1in</xsl:param>
<xsl:param name="page-margin-left">1in</xsl:param>
<xsl:param name="page-margin-right">1in</xsl:param>

<!-- page header and footer -->

<xsl:param name="page-header-margin">0.5in</xsl:param>
<xsl:param name="page-footer-margin">0.5in</xsl:param>
<xsl:param name="title-print-in-header">true</xsl:param>
<xsl:param name="page-number-print-in-footer">true</xsl:param>

<!-- multi column -->

<xsl:param name="column-count">1</xsl:param>
<xsl:param name="column-gap">12pt</xsl:param>

<!-- writing-mode: lr-tb | rl-tb | tb-rl -->

<xsl:param name="writing-mode">lr-tb</xsl:param>

<!-- text-align: justify | start -->

<xsl:param name="text-align">start</xsl:param>

<!-- hyphenate: true | false -->

<xsl:param name="hyphenate">false</xsl:param>

Main functions

XBRL (eXtensible Business Reporting Language) is a specification for describing XML-based business documents and it aims to exchange the data of financial statements and accounts.

APRA (Australian Prudential Regulation Authority) integrated XBRL into their management business. Also, JFMIP (The Joint Financial Management Improvement Program) recommends for all the Federal Government Agencies of the US to use XBRL.

Visit XBRL Japan or XBRL USA for more information.

We provide a stylesheet that transforms XBRL for a statement of account to FO here.

• Download a stylesheet
• Download an XBRL sample data for a statement of account

A balance sheet and a statement of profits and losses are created by downloading the above 2 files and formatting with XSL Formatter.