This repository contains examples for the XTS XML typesetting system, an open source database publishing system that creates PDF from XML data.
Every example is a directory with a layout.xml, usually a data.xml, and a Readme.md that says what the example shows and which commands to look at. result.pdf is the output of the current XTS release, firstpage.png a preview of its first page.
To run an example, install XTS from the releases page and run xts inside the example directory. The result is xts.pdf. The manual explains the commands.
Start here. The examples build on each other, from the first PDF to a multi-page document with a table of contents.
| Description | Preview |
|---|---|
| Hello World -- Minimal layout: one Record, one TextBlock, one Value |  |
| Data processing 1 -- Barcodes per data element using Record and ProcessNode |  |
| Data processing 2 -- The same barcodes using ForAll and sd:grid-width() |  |
| Text formatting -- Four ways to get bold, italic and lists into text |  |
| Simple table -- Two column price table from data with CSS alignment |  |
| Images -- PDF, JPEG, PNG, placeholder and missing image handling |  |
| Mail merge -- One form letter per record with master page and areas |  |
| Planets -- Two-run booklet with table of contents, bookmarks and links |  |
| Description | Preview |
|---|---|
| The Gnat and the Bull -- Fable on a full-bleed photo with embedded fonts and CSS |  |
| Description | Preview |
|---|---|
| Base64 decode -- Image from base64 data via sd:decode-base64 and sd:file-contents |  |
| ZUGFeRD invoice -- PDF/A-3b invoice with the embedded Factur-X XML |  |
Every example is run and compared against its result.pdf on each push, see the workflow. To do the same locally you need XTS and Rake; ImageMagick and Ghostscript are only used when a PDF differs:
rake qa
Every example is run with --suppressinfo, which makes the PDF reproducible, and the result is compared with result.pdf by hash. Only when the bytes differ, which a newer XTS can cause without a visible change, xts compare renders both PDFs and compares the pages. A visible difference produces pagediff-NN.png files in the example directory and a compare-report.html. rake qa[introduction/planets] checks one example, XTS=path/to/xts rake qa uses another binary than the one in PATH.
After changing an example, rake regenerateqa[introduction/planets] writes its new result.pdf and firstpage.png; without the argument it regenerates all of them. rake clean removes the files a run leaves behind.