and 
in the categorized view:
All other properties for this element are displayed in the inspector
window on the left. They are arranged in groups belonging together. The groups
can be opened or closed with the little buttons
and in the categorized view:
The Object Name is always found on top of the categorized view. XSLfast names each element but of course you can give them the names you want. Just double click the name to make the field editable, enter the new name and apply the change by pressing Enter. This element name is displayed in the list box between XML window and inspector window.
Every selected element from this box is also selected on the sheet, which is very helpful if you have many elements placed there. The elements are also selected if you placed them outside the actual working sheet (which is useful e.g. for templates which we will describe later in this manual).
You have the possibility of locking elements so they can neither be moved nor modified any more. Use the function Uneditable for this.
In the group Text you modify the text inside the element. The entry field Text offers the editor window, which you also open by double clicking the element. Click the word Edit:
This editor window provides you with the chance to enter static text or select nodes from the XML source. Both can also be combined.
Example: You enter some static text into the editor field and then you drag a node from the XML tree to the field as well:
On your sheet it looks like this:
We have selected a background color to make it clearer.
If you processed this layout now, this would be the result:
XSLfast has placed the name of the product group into the static text.
The text element also offers more possibilities to insert dynamic elements. On the right side of the editor window there are these icons:
By clicking these icons you insert the respective empty element at the position of your cursor. The icons represent a bar code, a citation, date/time, a formatted number, an index and an Internet link. You can also select a node from the XML tree and then click the button; it will insert the respective element with the path to the selected node. These elements can be converted into each other and formatted with their context menu. It also offers the properties for the elements where you can make more settings. This is a simple way of inserting dynamic fields into your text.
There is also the possibility of modifying or enhancing elements, which have been inserted into your text. For these functions you should have XSLT skills. If the cursor is placed in one of those elements, you can open the following functions on the right side:
These are XSLT expressions, which can be very helpful if you use them with the elements in the text. Please find more information on these expressions in the relevant technical literature or in the Internet, e.g. on http://www.w3.org/TR/xslt.
The text editor also offers icons to modify the style of the text, like the icons in the icon bar:
Assign a background color to the frame with the color window opening at click on Background color:
Choose the background color you want to assign to your text element. You can also enter color values on the tabs HSB, RGB and CMYK. Please keep in mind that the values you enter may differ from the color displayed on the sheet.
The function Make transparent allows you to give the text element a transparent background. This is helpful if you want to place the text element in a table which has a background image or a background color or if your working sheet has a background image on it. Apply the color with the button "OK" or abort with the button "Cancel". You can set the color back to default with the button "Reset".
Only if your text element is in a table, there is the function Expand to right available in the inspector window. This function is used to indicate that the content of a text frame in a table cell may exceed what it shows:
Currently you can only see a small part of the string inside the text frame. Using Expand to right, XSLfast indicates that there is more text without the need to resize the cell:
Set the line height for your text with the function Line height. Usually, the line height should be 20-25% bigger than the font size.
Please note: Currently this value is only considered for the space between text lines, not text lines and element border.
In the group Frame properties you will find the command Bounds, which shows the current element settings for that group.
Fix a text frame in a position by activating the check box Absolute placement. In this mode the frame will appear in this position. If the check box is not activated, the frame will be aligned to the next available empty top left position.
Note: The appearance of a fixed frame depends to a certain degree on the other elements on the sheet. If a fixed frame is e.g. placed below a table with dynamic contents, the frame will appear below the table after it is finished (which may even take many pages).
When the frame is placed absolute, you can also determine the frame coordinates by entering values in the fields Left and Top. Enter the distance between the frame and the left rim of the sheet and between the frame and the top rim of the sheet. The coordinates will also show the change of values if you drag the element with the mouse.
If the frame is placed absolute, you can either size the frame by pulling it into the desired size with the mouse or by entering values into the fields Width and Height.
Padding left, Padding right, Padding top and Padding bottom control the distance between content and frame. Enter the desired values.
If you use XEP or XSLformatter as your Renderer, the menu item Orientation is available. It allows you to give the contents of the frame four orientations: 0 (regular orientation), 90 (turned 90 degrees counterclockwise), 180 (upside down) and 270 (turned 270 degrees counterclockwise /90 degrees clockwise).
Attention: The orientation is not visible on the working sheet but only after the processing of the layout.
With the command Border you decide whether the frame should have a border or not. A submenu opens:
By default, frames have no border. If you want to have a border around the entire frame, click the check box Border, enter the width and select the color by clicking on the colored space beside Border color. The default settings are 1pt width and the color black. If you only want to assign single color lines for the frame, you can assign all four sides individually. Apply your selection with the button "OK" or abort with the button "Cancel".
Attention: XSLfast offers the possibility of assigning element (frame) borders, cell borders and table borders. These three functions may affect each other if used at the same time. The current Renderer also affects the border functions because different Renderers have different ways of handling borders.
With the command Horizontal Alignment you determine whether the contents of the frame should be aligned to the Left, Center, Right or Justified. Vertical alignment aligns the frame content to the top, the center or the bottom of the frame; but these options are only available when the frame is in a table.
Again, the Level function helps you arranging overlapping elements on the sheet. By default, all elements placed on the sheet belong to level 10. Levels 9-0 are on top of level 10, level 11 and higher are below level 10.
You will only need the command Span if you work with several columns on your sheet. It makes a frame span all columns if you select "all" from the select box, or just one column if you select "none".
In the menu XSL-FO options you will find the commands Generate FO-Block and Generate FO-Block Container. This is XSL-FO specific and controls the creation of blocks and block containers for the frame. In short, the FO-Block-Container is e.g. needed to apply padding to its contents (padding can only be set between a block and a container or a container and a container, not between a block and another block or between a block and plain text). A FO-Block Container can also contain more than one FO-Elements. You can create custom attribute names and their values for each, XSL-FO containers and XSL-FO blocks, if you need to use XSL-FO attributes which XSLfast does not provide currently.
If you do not activate the command Use 'apply', you will only see the first data set of the node. The command Use 'apply' has the effect that not only the first value but also all contained values of this node are displayed. Use 'apply' reads the information contained in the concerned node and returns all nodes possessing a value. It is needed to define the set of nodes to be processed. In our case it is used to specify that all nodes contained in the respective node are considered, not only the first one.
Example: The node Report/ProductGroup/Name contains four product groups: "Productgroup 1" to "Productgroup 4". If you use this node without Use 'apply', you will only see "Productgroup 1" in the frame. Otherwise you can see all four product groups displayed in the frame:
The command Collapse space will remove all blanks (spaces) in texts, which are not in the correct place (e.g. between word and dot: "output .", will return "output."). All remaining runs of two or more consecutive spaces are replaced by a single space, and then any remaining space immediately adjacent to a remaining linefeed is also discarded.
Normalize space is used for dynamic data from the XML file, which contains two or more blanks in places.
XSL works with an array of special characters like & or <>. If you would like to use these characters in your text frames, activate the check box Disable output escaping. Now all characters are actually shown as letters, not as code in your text frame.
Only if the text element is a part of a table, and you have enabled the Saxon extensions the function Suppress Redundant Information is available for it. This function causes the suppression of redundant information contained in the respective node. It is to a great degree dependent of the data structure in the used XML file, however.
Example: A product exists in variants, which have different properties but the same Product ID. Some of the products belong to the same product group; others belong to a different product group. The next image shows you a small part of a hierarchical structure in an XML file:
Products P1 to P3 have the identical value for the attribute ‘Product ID’. P1 and P2 belong to the same product group, but P3 belongs to a different product group. You do not want to display the same value for the attribute "Product ID" for all the products in your table over and over. If you use the Suppress redundant information function, the redundant attribute value will not be displayed in the table any more. But this only applies for redundant information coming from the same parent node (in this example the same product group, see "1"). In our example it is not possible to suppress the display of P3 because it does not belong to the same parent node (see "2").
Please note: This function can only be used if the data with the potentially redundant information are contained consecutively in the XML file, coming from the same parent. Redundant data, which is spread over the XML file, cannot be suppressed this way.
It is possible to turn a frame into a template that can be used in conditional cases controlled by XSL code. Click the check box Generate Template to declare this element as a template. It is given a name by XSLfast but you can also give it the name you want. You can also specify template parameters, which can be helpful when calling that template. A simple example is described in the chapter Tables. Please find more information about XSL code in the corresponding literature.
The Page break before function sets a page-breaking behavior before an element, Page break after sets a page-break after the element.
Note: You cannot use this function on absolutely positioned elements.
Space before/Space after define a vertical space before or after the contents of the element are displayed. This function can be used for elements in tables but the most commonly use for it is the table itself.
Example: You have created a table with some elements in it.
Generating the layout produces the following result:
You can see that due to the relative positioning of the table (it is positioned to the first empty space in the top left corner of the layout body) and the positioning of the blue element and the red element in the header, header and table area are displayed with no distance between them. Set the Space before function of the table to 20pt:
Now there is a fix gap between the blue and red elements in the header and the table in the body. This function is very useful if you want to define a fix space in front or after a table.