Table of contents

Appendices

6.1 Introduction to Formatting Objects

The refined formatting object tree describes one or more intended presentations of the information within this tree. Formatting is the process which converts the description into a presentation. See [fo-jc-intro] . The presentation is represented, abstractly, by an area tree, as defined in the area model. See [area_model] . Each possible presentation is represented by one or more area trees in which the information in the refined formatting object tree is positioned on a two and one-half dimensional surface.

There are three kinds of formatting objects: (1) those that generate areas, (2) those that return areas, but do not generate them, and (3) those that are used in the generation of areas. The first and second kinds are typically called flow objects. The third kind is either a layout object or an auxiliary object. The kind of formatting object is indicated by the terminology used with the object. Formatting objects of the first kind are said to "generate one or more areas". Formatting objects of the second kind are said to "return one or more areas". Formatting objects of the first kind may both generate and return areas. Formatting objects of the third kind are "used in the generation of areas"; that is, they act like parameters to the generation process.

Definitions Common to Many Formatting Objects[top]

This categorization leads to defining two traits which characterize the relationship between an area and the formatting objects which generate and return that area. These traits are generated-by and returned-by.

The value of the generated-by trait is a single formatting object. A formatting object F is defined to generate an area A if the semantics of F specify the generation of one or more areas and A is one of the areas thus generated, or is a substituted form of one of the areas thus generated, as specified in section [area-linebuild] .

In the case of substituted glyph-areas, the generating formatting object is deemed to be the formatting object which generated the glyph-area which comes first in the sequence of substituted glyph-areas. In the case of an inserted glyph-area (e.g., an automatically-generated hyphen) the generating formatting object is deemed to be the generating formatting object of the last glyph-area preceding the inserted glyph-area in the pre-order traversal of the area tree.

The value of the returned-by trait is a set of pairs, where each pair consists of a formatting object and a positive integer. The integer represents the position of the area in the ordering of all areas returned by the formatting object.

A formatting object F is defined to return the sequence of areas A, B, C, ... if the pair (F,1) is a member of the returned-by trait of A, the pair (F,2) is a member of the returned-by trait of B, the pair (F,3) is a member of the returned-by trait of C, ...

If an area is a member of the sequence of areas returned by a formatting object, then either it was generated by the formatting object or it was a member of the sequence of areas returned by a child of that formatting object. Not all areas returned by a child of a formatting object need be returned by that formatting object. A formatting object may generate an area that has, as some of its children areas, areas returned by the children of that formatting object. These children (in the area tree) of the generated area are not returned by the formatting object to which they were returned.

A set of nodes in a tree is a lineage if:

• there is a node N in the set such that all the nodes in the set are ancestors of N, and

• for every node N in the set, if the set contains an ancestor of N, it also contains the parent of N.

The set of formatting objects that an area is returned by is a lineage.

Areas returned by a formatting object may be either normal or out-of-line. Normal areas represent areas in the "normal flow of text"; that is, they become area children of the areas generated by the formatting object to which they are returned. Normal areas have a returned-by lineage of size one. There is only one kind of normal area.

Out-of-line areas are areas used outside the normal flow of text either because they are absolutely positioned or they are part of a float or footnote. Out-of-line areas may have a returned-by lineage of size greater than one.

The area-class trait indicates which class, normal or out-of-line, an area belongs to. For out-of-line areas, it also indicates the subclass of out-of-line area. The values for this trait are: "xsl-normal", "xsl-absolute", "xsl-footnote", "xsl-side-float", or "xsl-before-float". An area is normal if and only if the value of the area-class trait is "xsl-normal"; otherwise, the area is an out-of-line area. (See section [area-stackcon] .)

The areas returned-by a given formatting object are ordered as noted above. This ordering defines an ordering on the sub-sequence of areas that are of a given area-class, such as the sub-sequence of normal areas. An area A precedes an area B in the sub-sequence if and only if area A precedes area B in the areas returned-by the formatting objects.

A reference-area chain is defined as a sequence of reference-areas that is either generated by the same formatting object that is not a page-sequence formatting object, or that consists of the region reference-areas or normal-flow-reference-areas (see [fo_region-body] ) generated using region formatting objects assigned to the same flow (see [fafm] ). The reference-areas in the sequence are said to be "contained" by the reference-area chain, and they have the same ordering relative to each other in the sequence as they have in the area tree, using pre-order traversal order of the area tree.