Comparing XSL-FO and CSS formatting is not straightforward. XSL implementations are not standing still: XSL formatters are still incrementally improving even though the XSL Recommendation has not been updated since 2006. CSS is definitely not standing still, although some of the modules most relevant to paged media are advancing slowly, if at all, and some paged media features have been removed in more recent Working Drafts.
This will be a high-level view of the differences and similarities between XSL-FO and CSS, based on an extensive new analysis by Antenna House while producing the book “XSL-FO/CSS Comparison” that itself is formatted identically using both XSL-FO and CSS. It also covers some of the features of how the two versions are produced.
Presented by Michael Miller
Michael Miller is Vice President of Antenna House, Inc., a company that has developed one of the leading standards‐based (XSL‐FO and CSS) document formatting software products on the market today. Michael has a degree in Printing Engineering and Management and has been involved in high‐end composition, document formatting, and document management for over 40 years. He has an extensive background with structured data, including SGML, XML, S1000D, and DITA. During his career, he has worked in Europe and North America and has been involved in the implementations of some of the largest fully automated publishing and document formatting projects.