What is FOP (Formatting Object Processor)?

FOP (Formatting Objects Processor) is a print formatter driven by XSL formatting objects (XSL-FO) and an output independent formatter. It is a Java application that reads a formatting object (FO) tree and renders the resulting pages to a specified output. Output formats currently supported include PDF, PS, PCL, AFP, XML (area tree representation), Print, AWT and PNG, and to a lesser extent, RTF and TXT. The primary output target is PDF.

FOP is developed by the Apache Software Foundation. It uses the standard XSL-FO file format as input, lays the content out into pages, then renders it to the requested output. One great advantage of using XSL-FO as input is that XSL-FO is itself an XML file, which means that it can be conveniently created from a variety of sources. The most common method is to convert semantic XML to XSL-FO, using an XSLT transformation.

FOP Releases:

FOP 2.8 - 09-Nov-2022
FOP 2.7 - 20-Jan-2022
FOP 2.6 - 20-Jan-2021
FOP 2.5 - 13-May-2020
FOP 2.4 - 05-Nov-2019
FOP 2.3 - 24-May-2018
FOP 2.2 - 10-Apr-2017
FOP 2.1 - 14-Jan-2016
FOP 2.0 - 26-May-2015
FOP 1.1 - 16-Oct-2012
FOP 1.0 - 12-Jul-2010
FOP 0.95 - 21-Jul-2008
FOP 0.94 - 18-Aug-2007
FOP 0.93 - 03-Jan-2007
FOP 0.20.5 - 15-Jul-2003

For more information, see Apache FOP Website

⇒ What Is XSL-FO Language

⇐ Introduction of FOP

⇑ Introduction of FOP

⇑⇑ FAQ for FOP (Formatting Object Processor)