Re: Dynamic Page Headings

At 2003-04-07 17:56 +0100, Al-Dhahir, Haitham wrote:
>I would like to know how to dynamically create page headings.

There are two kinds of "dynamically changing headers" when using XSL:

(1) dynamically changing headers at XSLT time when you are creating 
separate page sequences and the static content used in each page sequence

(2) dynamically changing headers at XSL-FO time when you are in the middle 
of a page sequence and you want the header to reflect information retrieved 
from the content

>I am receiving
>an XML message of the form:

You need the dynamic nature found in (1) at transformation time, and not 
the kind in (2) that users of XSL-FO usually refer to when talking about 
"dynamic content".

>Each item needs to be displayed sequentially in a PDF document, with each
>item starting a new page

You can create a separate page sequence, then, for each item.

>I want to put the "name" and "address" for the item at the top of
>each page as a heading:

You can create static content for each page sequence with the name and 
address information you require for those pages.

>It seems to make sense to use a static content section at the top of each
>page to achieve this

Yes, defined at the beginning of each page sequence, with a page sequence 
created for every item.

>  - however, given that the static-content needs to
>contain the item's specific name and address, read dynamically from the XML
>message, is this possible?

At transformation time when you create your XSL-FO from your XML.

>Also, the number of items is not known in
>advance, so I can't create a separate static-content for each item.

Yes, you can, because the static content is defined separately for each 
page sequence.  You are allowed to have "one or more" page sequences in a 
single XSL-FO instance ... each one will have the single header static 
content that you need.

I hope this helps.

........................... Ken


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Received on Monday, 7 April 2003 15:48:55 UTC