Page

The properties for the page are found in the menu Page:

Some of the pages, which can be inserted here, have properties, which make it easier to create a multipage brochure or a booklet. You can add a title page, which has no special properties and serves as the top page of your document. The same goes for the tail page, which is the bottom page of your document. XSLfast also allows adding several title or tail pages, which are displayed in the order they were created. They are named title.1, title.2, tail.1, tail.2 and so on.

Attention: Different Renderers like FOP, XEP or XSLFormatter have different function ranges concerning regions and title/tail pages. FOP cannot use even or odd regions separately but if odd regions are specified; even regions need to be specified as well. FOP is also unable to add tail pages to documents and more. Please find more information on FOP's function range in the Internet, e.g. http://xml.apache.org/fop/.

The other commands add regions to the pages, which can be assigned to odd or even pages, the first and the last page of a document or the first or last page and the rest of the pages of a document or to all pages of a document.

Some commands must be used in combination with other commands:

Regions are areas on the top, bottom, left and right of the page, indicated by blue lines. Elements placed in these regions will appear on every page of the generated document. The use of the regions gives you a lot of possibilities to design your document in a sophisticated way. The use of the regions will be explained in the chapter Regions.

Please note: The first/rest//last/any page regions and the odd/even regions are two different kinds of regions but they can be combined with each other. Unfortunately FOP has also limitations concerning the combination of these regions, like e.g. using first region and not rest region but "odd and even" regions. Please find more information on FOP in the Internet, e.g. at http://xml.apache.org/fop/.

If one of these region pages is not needed any more, click on its tab to select it and remove it with the command Delete page.

The Grouping command is used to establish a connection between the page and the XML file. The page is grouped to the top node by default. If no XML file has been selected so far, the entry shows "No XML selected”. During the layout process, you will probably group the page, tables and XML frames to nodes from the XML file. We will describe this process in detail later in this manual.

The properties of the page can be set via the command Page properties:

Width and Height are preset with the paper size you selected in File-> Preferences-> Paper size setup but can be modified here with the corresponding entry fields. If you enter a custom size here, the paper size in that menu changes to Custom and displays the values you entered here.

If you want to have your page divided in columns, use the command Columns. Enter the number of columns into the field.

Modify the gap between columns with the command Gap between columns. The columns are marked on your sheet with blue dashed lines.

If you want to add pagination but need it to start with another number than 1, you can enter the required starting number into the field Alternate page number.

Separate numbers for every page sequence means that every page sequence created by the page grouping will have its own set of page numbers and numbering will begin at 1 again (or the initial page number) every time a new sequence starts.

Initial page number specifies the number the page numbers should start with. It is also possible to start with another number than 1.

There are many options in the select box Forced page count:

Force-page-count is used to impose a constraint on the number of pages in a page-sequence. In case that this constraint is not satisfied, an additional page will be added to the end of the sequence. This page becomes the "last" page of that sequence.

The values have the following meanings:

auto

Force the last page in this page sequence to be an odd-page if the initial-page-number of the next page sequence is even. Force it to be an even-page if the initial-page-number of the next page sequence is odd. If there is no next page sequence or if the value of its initial page number is "auto" do not force any page.

even

Force an even number of pages in this page sequence.

odd

Force an odd number of pages in this page sequence.

end-on-even

Force the last page in this page sequence to be an even page.

end-on-odd

Force the last page in this page-sequence to be an odd page.

no-force

Do not force either an even or an odd number of pages in this page-sequence.

The function Expression for pages is only used in layouts which were created combining pages from independent layouts (see chapter Combine pages). This expression represents a way to apply conditions to the page and is only available on main pages. Entering 1 or leaving the function empty always displays the page. If you want to hide this page in the layout, enter O. It is also possible to enter a condition on which the page should be hidden or displayed (similar to the if conditions for elements).

In the field Description you can enter some information about this page, when it should be used or what it is used for.

It is possible to assign a Background color or a Background image to the page. The color can be selected with the color selection window and be set back to the default color with the command Revert to default. The image is selected via the file browser and is placed inside the body of the page, with the regions as boundaries, which can be used to size the image. Delete the background image with the command Remove background image.

The check box Uneditable here has the effect that the page itself cannot be altered any more, it is locked. This affects all modifications like grouping, adding regions or changing the background color or image.