XSL Formatting Objects Developer's Handbook
I have just started working with XSLT and XSL-FO. This is an excellent book that explains all of this stuff in a language that you can understand. I would definitely recommend this book if you are new at this stuff.
It also has an excellent appendixes with the listing of all of the objects and properties.
Good introduction to XSL-FO concepts
Before I jump into an overview of the book, I wanted to make a quick observation first. I personally can't understand why XSL-FO hasn't caught on as fast as XSLT, XML and its ultra popular variant HTML. XSL-FO is the third spec of the original big three specs provided by the W3C and it was supposed to provide a markup language suited specifically to printing documents. XSL-FO is to the printed page what HTML is to the browser.
This is one of three books currently available on the XSL-FO topic, and I am shocked at the lack of availability of good books on the topic. This is the first book I read on XSL-FO and I have to say it does a good job of introducing the language and it's concepts. It is a semi good reference book. However, the code samples I think are just horrible. There is not a single examples where you have simple straight XSL-FO. All code examples are FO interlined with XSLT, making the syntax confusing and almost unreadable. You have to sift through 2 pages of XSLT before you get to one XSL-FO element. I think part of the slow acceptance of the language has to do with the fact that all books on the topic present code that mixes FO and XSLT. You can write straight workable XSL-FO that is much easier to debug and understand, than the code presented in this book.
Also the renderer software that was recommended in the book are the oldest guys on the market, but definitely not the best. Antenna House is the big dog and they have an excellent renderer (they are very expensive though). Some of the other renderers mentioned in the book are just terrible. If you want a list of good renderes search online. On the Windows platform, in my opinion, the best two renders for high volume operations on the market are Antenna House and the Ibex PDF Creator (from xmlpdf.com)
A good book that gives XSL-FO only code samples is the Ken Holman "Definitive XSL-FO" book. That book is a more advanced book however, and is only good if you already understand the language. It is also a semi-good reference book. To a novice, that book will be a bit over the top and probably very confusing. The other good book on the market is the O'Reilly book. Of the three, it is the best reference book by far.
So to recap, if you are venturing into XSL-FO, buy Doug Lovell's book in the beginning. Then buy the Dave Pawson book for reference. And finally when you get some mileage under your belt, get the Ken Holman book for the more advanced concepts and topics.
Good code but good formatters are hard to find
I rated the book 4 stars because it provides solid examples in many areas of XSL FO that actually work. Even though the W3C recommendation has been out since October, 2001, we have just started to see accessible books on XSL FO, and this is the best. The author provides a hands-on view and gives you examples that work and get you up and going quickly. Not a lot of wading through esoterica wondering how you would even get started with a simple document.However, that is not to say that the book is without problems. Let me list them in order:
1. Software that will format XSL FO is in its infancy. Therefore, although the examples work, you have to burn some shoe leather finding software that is compliant with the spec. It would have been better if the author had bundled an evaluation copy of either the Antenna House software which he claimed would format *almost* all of the examples or his own XFC software that he developed for IBM alphaworks. I did download the XFC software, but although written in Java, it is very much oriented towards a windows platform, and I could not concoct a way to get it to run on my linux machine (I gave up after discovering I had a non-compliant version of the xerces package). I think one of the reasons Michael Kay's Wrox XSLT book has been so popular has been because of his work on Saxon. Software would have made this book a 5 star book.
2. Downloadable examples. These were not available at first, but the author had them up within a week of my email, correcting an error on the publisher's web page. So, this went from a problem to a plus.
3. Pagination (Chapter 8) is not very clear. Some of the figure references seem to have been reversed (generally, in many places where the author refers to figure 8.1 you should read 8.2 and vice versa). This chapter needed a concrete example to start. Then the author could have gotten into the more esoteric issue of overlapping regions.
(3 reviews)
