IBM's recently-released XSL Formatting Objects Composer (XFC) is "a typesetting and display engine that implements a substantial portion of XSL Formatting Objects (FO), which became a W3C Recommendation on October 15, 2001. XSL FO is an XML language for typesetting, printing, or displaying any of the world's written languages. XFC produces either an interactive onscreen display using Java2D or an output file using PDF. A single formatting engine drives both Java2D and PDF output through a common interface, making XFC the world's first output-independent processor of XSL FO. Other outputs are possible, and some are being developed. XFC is a Java program, developed with JDK 1.3 and released with the run-time component of the IBM WebSphere preview technologies for Windows Developer Kit."
The IBM XSL Formatting Objects Composer was released October 17, 2001. It runs on all Java platforms, and for platforms other than Windows requires JVM 1.3. The XFC documentation includes a table describing features of the FO specification which have and have not been implemented in this version.
Terminology from the XFC FAQ: "What is the XSL FO Recommendation? 'XSL' stands for 'eXtensible Stylesheet Language.' 'FO' stands for 'Formatting Objects.' The XSL FO Recommendation is a product of the W3C (World Wide Web Consortium) XSL Working Group. That working group has produced XSLT (XSL Transform), XPath (XML Path Language), and XSL FO (XSL Formatting Objects) recommendations. XSL FO recommends a standard XML for describing the appearance of formatted content on a paginated or display device; that is, in print or on screen..."
- IBM XSL Formatting Objects Composer (XFC)
- IBM XSL FO Composer: Suported Properties
- IBM WebSphere preview technologies for Windows Developer Kit
- Extensible Stylesheet Language (XSL) Version 1.0. (FO) W3C Recommendation 15-October-2001.
- W3C Extensible Stylesheet Language (XSL) web site
- "XSL/XSLT Software Support" - Main reference page.