RE: [xsl] newspaper layout with FOs?

[Arved Sandstrom <Arved_37@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi, Steve

At the moment you're basically SOL, to use the vernacular.

XSL 1.0 is heavily attuned to content-driven layout: one central body region 
and up to 4 peripheral regions per page master, page masters generally 
intended to select on rather unsophisticated conditions (first or last page, 
even/odd, etc), and most devastating for what you want: exactly _one_ flow 
per page-sequence.

You pretty much have to wait for XSL 2.0 to see layout-driven support. You 
can find papers dating back to '98, say (check out 
http://www.seyboldseminars.com/Events/sf98/transcripts/ETAPE_30.html, 
Stephen Deach's part near the end, for example), when the first XSL draft 
just came out, where the WG people are talking about the flow-map object 
that is only mentioned as an aside in the CR, and at that time they were 
also talking about multiple "content queues" per page sequence, switched 
into various regions by the flow-map. This all went away when reality set 
in. :-)

(For those who are curious about the difference, Deach has a useful paper, 
one URL for which is http://www.infoloom.com/gcaconfs/WEB/paris98/deach.HTM).

Ironically the issue may have been more with the spec...who was happy with 
what feature, in other words. Because N flows are about as simple to 
implement as one, and if you can properly handle 1-5 regions on each of a 
whole bunch of page-masters, you sure as heck can handle more than 5.

I get the impression that you did enough reading that this is probably no 
great surprise.

Regards,
Arved Sandstrom

----- Original -----

Date: Thu, 15 Feb 2001 14:49:09 -0800
From: "HIEBERT,STEVE (HP-Corvallis,ex1)" <steve_hiebert@xxxxxx>
Subject: [xsl] newspaper layout with FOs?

Hi.  Long time lurker; first time poster.

I've been poring over the XSL 1.0 Candidate Recommendation, reading the
FAQs, etc., and I'm having a hard time figuring out how I would create a
"continued on" page citation a' la column continuations in a newspaper.

It's even worse than that because I'd actually like to start two or more
flows in separate columns on page one and at the end of the column for each
flow emit a "continued on page ##" for each, filling in the "##" with the
page number where the flow continues.  I'd like the two or more flows from
page one to be placed one after the other on following pages.

The problem I have is that fo:page-number-citation returns the page number
of the first normal area from the object.  Ignoring the desire to begin
multiple parallel flows on page one, I still have the problem that all my
continuation lines would  refer to page one.

It'd be even better if I could get a fo:column-number-citation but I don't
even see that at all.

Have I missed something?  If not, are there plans to enable newspaper layout
in XSL's future?

Steve

Fairly Senior Software Type
e-plicity (http://www.e-plicity.com)
Wireless * B2B * J2EE * XML --- Halifax, Nova Scotia


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