Inserting a line break in a PDF generated from XSL FO using <xsl:value-of>

user_311811 0
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I am using XSL FO to generate a PDF file containing a table with information. One of these columns is a "Description" column. An example of a string that I am populating one of these Description fields with is as follows:

This is an example Description.<br/>List item 1<br/>List item 2<br/>List item 3<br/>List item 4

Inside the table cell that corresponds to this Description, I would like the output to display as such:

This is an example Description.
List item 1
List item 2
List item 3
List item 4

I've learned from searching elsewhere that you can make line breaks in XSL FO using an <fo:block></fo:block> within another <fo:block> element. Therefore, even before I parse the XML with my XSL stylesheet, I replace all occurrences of <br/> with <fo:block/>, so that the literal value of the string now looks like:

This is an example Description.<fo:block/>List item 1<fo:block/>List item 2<fo:block/>List item 3<fo:block/>List item 4

The problem arises when the Description string I am using is obtained using <xsl:value-of>, example as follows:

<fo:block>
    <xsl:value-of select="descriptionStr"/>
</fo:block>

In which case, the value that gets output to my PDF document is the literal value, so it looks exactly like the previous example with all the <fo:block/> literals. I've tried manually hard-coding the <fo:block/> in the middle of another string, and it displays correctly. E.g. if I write inside my stylesheet:

<fo:block>Te<fo:block/>st</fo:block>

It will display correctly as:

Te
st

But this does not seem to happen when the <fo:block/> is inside the value of an <xsl:value-of select=""/> statement. I've tried searching for this on SO as well as Google, etc. to no avail. Any advice or help will be greatly appreciated. Thank you!

xsl-fo xslt
11 Answers

I usually use an empty block with a height that can be changed if I need more or less space:

<fo:block padding-top="5mm" />

I know this isn't the best looking solution but it's funtional.

user_38867050

I had a text block that looks like this

<fo:table-cell display-align="right">
<fo:block font-size="40pt" text-align="right">
    <xsl:text> Text 1 </xsl:text>
    <fo:block> </fo:block>
    <xsl:text> Text2 </xsl:text>
    <fo:block> </fo:block>
    <xsl:text> Text 3</xsl:text>
</fo:block>

NB: note the empty

user_29290860

</fo:block> on it's own is not a direct substitute for <br/> <br/> is an html unpaired abberation that has no direct equivalent in xsl:fo

</fo:block> just means end of block. If you scatter them through your text you wont have valid xml, and your xsl processor will sick up errors.

For the line break formatting you want, each block will occur on a new line. You need a <fo:block> start block and </fo:block> end block pair for each line.

user_11823090
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