Re: DOCBOOK: more customizing of the fo xsl stylesheets

[Bob Stayton <bobs at caldera dot com>]

On Mon, Dec 02, 2002 at 02:34:21AM +0100, Tobias Grimm wrote:
> Hi!
> 
> Thanks to Bob and Stephan, separating sections and chapter
> summarizations from the chapters title-page works quit good
> (except of some bugs in FOP). Who ever wants to try this, I've
> put a little example together. You will find it at the end of this
> mail.
> 
> Now I want to do a little bit more customization, but don't have a
> clue how to do it or if it is possible at all:
> 
> 1. I want to have a big margin on the left (or better the outer) side
> of the page separated by a vertical line from the text.
> 
> 2. Adminition-graphics should be placed outside of the text in this
> big margin.
> 
> 3. Each chapter title page should have a big grey vertical rectangle
> spanning the whole page height. (To make it easier finding chapters,
> when printed out.)
> 
> I couldn't find any examples, doing such things. So I would appreciate
> any suggestions or hints.

I think you will need to learn a bit of XSL-FO.
I recommend Dave Pawson's book "XSL-FO".

For lines in margins, you will want to look at the
page-master setup in the DocBook XSL file
fo/pagesetup.xsl.  In particular, look at customizing the
region-start and region-end reference areas (left and right
areas in the default writing mode)).  DocBook provides
support for a different page-master on the first page of a
sequence, so that should help with the chapter title page
graphic.

Getting the admonition graphics into the margin area might
be done by setting an outdent on the list-item-label in the
list-block structure.  That would work if you keep the
graphic on the left, but I don't know how you would do it
for getting it into alternating outside margins.

Bob Stayton                                 400 Encinal Street
Publications Architect                      Santa Cruz, CA  95060
Technical Publications                      voice: (831) 427-7796
The SCO Group                               fax:   (831) 429-1887
                                            email: bobs@sco.com