RE: Predictability of rendering regions on the page

Hello,

> > Does XSL-FO 1.0 dictate that the perimeter regions are
> > rendered before the body region?

Some kind of predictability is already implemented in Antenna House XSL Formatter. The order of regions on a page is dictated by the order of region-... specifications in a simple-page-master that prepares this page. This is a simple and beautiful solution. It does not requires z-index! But it conflicts a bit with XSL FO specification, because in it we see:
(region-body,region-before?,region-after?,region-start?,region-end?)The restriction of order in this specification requires that region-body must be specified first. I think this restriction is very hard and should be removed. An order of regions in the simple-page-master should be any. And this order specifies an order the regions will be placed on a page prepared with this master.

Sincerely,
Alexander I Rozhenko