I am quite new to XSL and FO, and am presently
designing a stylesheet to transform and render
certain publications in XML format to PDF. I
have run into a few problems, and was hoping you could help me out.

1. We are using different formats for even and
odd pages. Although I can set the margins etc.
in appropriately for odd and even pages in the
<simple-page-master>, I need some means to check
for odd/even pages during the flow of the document,

One cannot "check" the parity of the page number
on the fly during the flow.  There is no feedback
loop to the transformation from the formatting process.

so that I can stylize the header and footer
differently for odd and even pages. Can this be done?

If your changes result in the same presentation
for all even pages and the same presentation for
all odd pages within a given page sequence (say a
chapter of a book), this is accommodated by
defining different static content for use in the
odd page simple page master from that used in the
even page simple page master.  This is
accomplished using different region names for the two page masters.

Some presentation changes can be made "on the fly" through the use of
markers.

2. Secondly, I am trying to display text
oriented at 90 degrees next to an image (for the
credits). For this i was putting the text inside
a <block> which i put inside a <block-container>
oriented at 90 deg, and after that was the block
containing the image. But this causes the image
to display below the text rather than alongside it.

The following works for me, flowing the credit up
the left size of a picture, tested with Antenna House, RenderX and Ibex:

  <block>Here is a photograph I took in Kowloon:</block>
  <block-container reference-orientation="90" width="2.5in">
    <block font-size="8pt">Photo credit by G. Ken Holman</block>
    <block-container reference-orientation="270">
      <block><external-graphic src="url('harbour.jpg')"/></block>
    </block-container>
  </block-container>

I guess there is an implicit 'newline' semantics associated with <block>.

There is, but only in the block progression
direction, which in real terms has changed due to
the change in reference orientation.  That is why
in my example the picture is abutted against the
credit, because of the size of the line with the credit.

Is there any way i can suppress this, or am i
taking a wrong approach altogether. What would be the best way to achieve

What XSL-FO are you using?  Perhaps your problem
is not with your XSL-FO but with your XSL-FO
processor (you don't say which one you are using).

--
UBL/XSLT/XSL-FO training: Allerxd/Verx Denmark 2006-11-13,17,20/24
UBL International 2006  2006-11-13/17 http://www.ublconference.com
World-wide corporate, govt. & user group UBL, XSL, & XML training.
G. Ken Holman                 mailto:gkholman@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Crane Softwrights Ltd.          http://www.CraneSoftwrights.com/s/
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