XSLT - XSL-FO / Generating PDF Documents

Overview

XSL Formatting Objects, or XSL-FO, is a markup language for XML document formatting which is most often used to generate PDFs. XSL-FO is part of XSL (Extensible Stylesheet Language), a set of W3C technologies designed for the transformation and formatting of XML data. The general idea behind XSL-FO's use is that the user writes a document, not in FO, but in an XML language. Then, the user uses an existing XSLT stylesheet or creates one of his/her own which then transforms / converts the XML into XSL-FO. From there, an FO processor finally renders the FO-document in formats like PDF or PostScript and other output formats depending on the capabilities of the renderer. This training provides you with a substantial knowledge of the FO standard and shows you in many hands-on labs how to create an XSL-FO document so that a real-world XML file can be published as a complex book. You will learn how to define page dimensions and page templates, create paragraphs, blocks like tables and lists, insert images, and how to define a table of contents, and links. The last part of the training shows you how to build modular XSL-FO documents applying advanced techniques of XSLT and how to automatize the transformation process using variables, parameters or attribute groups.