pdf generation

Hello All - 

I am looking into the possibility of using XML to PDF generation (using XSLT
to generate FO) for document contains multiple tables and columns.  As these
tables may span over multiple pages, it is appropriate to have page footers
with sub-totals of the page, and in the next page the same may appear as
headers.  In XSL-FO one can make use of region-before/end to introduce any
static text; but, in this context the contents of header/footer (with page
totals) can never be static!  just to make it clear:  If N rows of data to
be displayed, X rows appear in page P, and Y rows appear in page Q --
depending upon the device context (such as page-size, font).  Page P must
contain sub-total for X rows, and page Q must begin with total of page X.

Even if it is nothing to do with page-totals, it is question of providing
context-sensitive header/footer.  More I think about this problem why is
that FO to PDF is a separate transformation;  In principle, it is similar to
XML/HTML transformation; differing only in the target serializer and
event-sync for constructs like report-after/before -- If only XSLT can
support rendering to a different target, one could use XPath expressions
with access to source document!

Is there any way to generate such reporting ?

thanks in advance for any advice
Bala Bharathan


PS:  If I were to use XML/scripting on a browser, I could accomplish this by
asking the browser about the layout of rendered contents.  Then I can decide
upon the header/footer.

 XSL-List info and archive:  http://www.mulberrytech.com/xsl/xsl-list