From http://www.w3schools.com (Copyright Refsnes Data)

XSL-FO Areas

XSL-FO uses rectangular boxes (areas) to display output.

XSL-FO Areas

The XSL formatting model defines a number of rectangular areas (boxes) to display output.

All output (text, pictures, etc.) will be formatted into these boxes and then displayed or printed to a target media.

We will take a closer look at the following areas:

• Pages
• Regions
• Block areas
• Line areas
• Inline areas

XSL-FO Pages

XSL-FO output is formatted into pages. Printed output will normally go into many separate pages. Browser output will often go into one long page.

XSL-FO Pages contain Regions.

XSL-FO Regions

Each XSL-FO Page contains a number of Regions:

• region-body (the body of the page)
• region-before (the header of the page)
• region-after (the footer of the page)
• region-start (the left sidebar)
• region-end (the right sidebar)

XSL-FO Regions contain Block areas.

XSL-FO Block Areas

XSL-FO Block areas define small block elements (the ones that normally starts with a new line) like paragraphs, tables and lists.

XSL-FO Block areas can contain other Block areas, but most often they contain Line areas.

XSL-FO Line Areas

XSL-FO Line areas define text lines inside Block areas.

XSL-FO Line areas contain Inline areas.

XSL-FO Inline Areas

XSL-FO Inline areas define text inside Lines (bullets, single character, graphics, and more).

From http://www.w3schools.com (Copyright Refsnes Data)