Is there something “like” CSS built into XSL-FO?

Question

I know that XSLT itself has attribute-sets, but that forces me to use

every time I want to output an<

Answer 1

No, you are not required to use xsl:element, the use-attribute-sets attribute can appear on literal result elements if you place it in the XSLT namespace, so you can use something like:

If you want to have something close to the CSS functionality then you can add another XSLT transformation at the end of your processing that adds the attributes that you want. You can start with a recursive identity transformation and then add templates matching on the elements you want to change, see a small example below

  
    value
  
  
    
      
    
  
  
    
      someValue