The area tree is a root element that has a list of page-viewport-areas. Each page viewport has a page-reference-area which holds the contents of the page. To handle the processing better FOP does not maintain a list at the root level but lets another class handle each page as it is added.

A page is made up of five area regions. These are before, start, body, end and after. Each region has a viewport and contains the areas produced from the children in the FO object heirarchy.

For the body area there are more subdivisions for before floats, footnotes and the main reference area. The main reference area is made from span areas which have normal flow reference areas as children. The flow areas are then created inside these normal flow reference areas.

Since the layout is done inside a page, the page is created from the pagemaster with all the appropriate areas. The layout manager then uses the page to add areas into the normal flow reference areas and floats and footnotes. After the layout of the body region is complete then the other regions can be done.

Block areas are created and/or returned by all top level elements in the flow. These areas have keep and spacing information that needs to be retained until the page is finalised. A block area is stacked with other block areas in a particular direction, it has a size and it contains either line areas made from a group of inline areas or block areas.

A block area can also be split into two block areas by splitting between two line areas or splitting between two block areas (or groups) that are stacked in the block progression direction of the page. The split may also be in a child block area.

A line areas is simply a collection of inline areas that are stacked in the inline progression direction. A line area has a height and width. It also contains information about floats and footnotes that are associated with the inline areas.

A line area gets a set of inline areas added until complete then it is justified and vertically aligned. If the line area contains unresolved areas it will retain the justification information until all areas are resolved.

There are a few different types of inline areas. All inline areas have a height. Their width may be variable until the line is finalised.

Unresolved areas can reserve some space to allow for possible sizes once it is resolved. Then the line can be re-justified and finalised.

Any subtree of the area tree should be cloneable so that for areas that are repeated the area tree can simply be copied rather than going through the layout again. This will only work if the width is the same.

Resolveable areas may be converted into an unresolved form.

The following class structure will be used to represent the area tree.

	Page Area Classes

The page area classes hold the top level layout of a page. The areas are created by the page master and should be ready to have flow areas added.

	Block Area Classes

The block areas typically hold either a set of line areas or a set of block areas. The child areas are usually stacked in a particular direction. Areas for tables and lists have their child block areas stacked in different ways. Lists also can have spacing between the block areas.

	Inline Area Classes

The inline areas are used to make up a line area. An inline area typically has a height, width and some content. The alignment is used for block progression direction displacement and to determine the height of a line.

The rendering of an area tree is done by rendering each page to a suitable output. The regions are rendered in order and each region is contained by a viewport.

The relevent structures that will need to be rendered are: Page Viewport Region Span Block Line Inline

The renderer will need to be able to: render each individual page clip and align child areas to a viewport handle all types of inline area, text, image etc. draw various lines and rectangles

An abstract renderer will be able to handle the generic positioning of child areas, iterating through areas that have child areas.