You saw in Developing for XML how different job types can be specified when using the XMLPrintStream class to communicate with the XML Server. These job types require different types of templates in order to be successful. While all the templates use XSL for formatting, there are two parts of that standard that are used in specific situations.
XSLT is a standard that defines a language for transforming XML documents in other XML documents. Elements of the XSLT language allow data from one XML document to be combined with static elements of a template (or stylesheet).
XSL-FO defines a set of elements for describing the physical layout of a document: paper size, fonts, spacing, image locations, etc. The layout model used is based on that used for PDF documents. A formatting objects processor can convert data marked up with formatting objects into other representations such as PDF or RTF.
The following subsections outline how these standards can be used to develop templates for each of the supported job types.
XSL and XSL-FO are extensive standards and it is beyond the scope of this document to describe them in more than cursory detail. Reference to books and useful Internet sites on these topics are included at the end of this chapter. You are advised to obtain such materials to learn how to use these technologies.