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Flow Layout

XSL-FO documents have flow layout, that is, content "flows" from one page to the next one:

<fo:flow flow-name="PageBody" font="bold 12pt Arial">
    <fo:block border="0.5pt solid blue" space-after="5pt">
        This is a first block element.
    </fo:block>
    <fo:block border="0.5pt solid blue" space-after="5pt">Œ
        The content of this block is split across multiple pages.
        ...
    </fo:block>
    <fo:block border="0.5pt solid blue" keep-together="always" > 
        The content of this block is not split because 
        keep-together is set.
        ...
    </fo:block>
    <fo:block border="0.5pt solid blue" space-after="5pt" 
         keep-with-next="always" > Ž
        A block element that still fits on the second page.
    </fo:block>
    <fo:block border="0.5pt solid blue">
        A block on the third page. The previous block will be
        displayed on the second page because it has
        keep-with-next flag set.
    </fo:block>
</fo:flow>

For the complete source code for this code example see "Tutorial/Flow Layout.fo" located under XML Documents Samples/Tutorial folder.

The result of rendering is displayed in following figure.

Figure 1

There are several properties that control how and when a block of text is split across multiple pages. They are:

• break-before and break-after attributes will force a page break before or after a block element. By block element we mean elements that fill all available horizontal space like paragraphs, tables and lists. For example, you might want to use this to start chapters on a new page.
• keep-together attribute prevents splitting of a block element. If there is not enough room to display the block on the current page, the block will be displayed on the next one (block ).
• keep-with-next and keep-with-previous will link a block element with the previous/next sibling block. This is useful to prevent page breaks occur between two closely related elements, like chapter title and chapter contents (block Ž).
• widows and orphans attributes are useful to control contextual information. The default values for this properties is "2", preventing the display of last line of a paragraph by itself at the top of a page (a widow) or the first line of a paragraph by itself at the bottom of a page (an orphan). You can see in the example above the fo:block Œ will display the two line on the second page.

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