XSL Formatting Objects, or XSL-FO, is an XML markup language for document formatting. XSL-FO is part of Extensible Stylesheet Language, a set of W3C technologies designed for the transformation and formatting of XML data. The other parts of XSL are XSL Transformations and XPath.

XML documents, unlike HTML and XHTML documents, have no inherent, implicit, or default layout format. XSL-FO is a language that can be used to specify physical layout, colouring, typography, etc, of XML documents for screen, print, and other media. In this sense its role is similar to that of Cascading style sheet, but it is more powerful and flexible, particularly with regard to pagination and scrolling.

XSL-FO, unlike Cascading style sheet, is itself expressed in well-formed and valid XML. This increases its flexibility still further, allowing XSL-FO, for example, to be mixed with XSLT in the same stylesheet if required.

=See also=

*XML *Extensible Stylesheet Language *XSL Transformations *Cascading Style Sheets *XHTML

=External links=