xml-dev - page header footer resolution

[Andy Dent <dent@highway1.com.au>]

I think I've come to an understanding of how we should be handling page
headers/footers, helped largely by reading the XSL spec.

In the following discussion header will stand for header and/or footer.

I'm assuming an embedded XSL stylesheet to create a single standalone
document, but that's probably irrelevant.

The two issues I've struggled to come to terms with are:
1) headers contain some flow objects (page number, count, current date) as
well as data. Some of that data may not appear anywhere else in the report.
Thus, the items in a header are a mixture of data content (should appear in
the plain XML) and flow objects (appear in the XSL). It has taken me a
while to resolve exactly WHERE in the XML the data content should appear.

2) our report-writer model allows you to specify headers with content that
will vary depending on where they appear (eg: using a database field that
varies as you move down the report) and which appear at effectively random
locations, being triggered by page breaks. Note: this creates problems for
us with our current RTF rendering. The solution to both is a "section"
model which defines the header/footer anew but without forcing a page
break. That way the new headers are available when needed.

What I'm a little puzzled about at the moment is the action of queues and
the different page areas.

I've seen slightly conflicting suggestions. In some postings it's been
suggested that there is not currently a standard way to HIDE content.

However, if you are routing parts of your XML to a pageHeaderQueue that's
one page area and parts to bodyQueue, then they are effectively hidden from
the other queues.

If pageHeaderQueue was not then linked to a page master object wouldn't
this have the effect of hiding the elements in that queue?

Is there some exclusion rule on formatting objects that says, once an
element has been consumed by one object, it is effectively obscured from
the others?

Is this an example of the transformation actions of formatting objects vs
the cascading effect of rendering styles?

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