DaveP My starting point was a simple list of properties which
could map straight across to XSL-FO. I chose
<!-- Grouped style attributes -->
<define name='db.fo.style.attributes'>
<optional>
<attribute name='color'/>
</optional>
<optional>
<attribute name='font-family'/>
</optional>
<optional>
<attribute name='font-size'/>
</optional>
<optional>
<attribute name='font-style'/>
</optional>
<optional>
<attribute name='font-variant'/>
</optional>
</define>
So I want an easy entry to the schema for these. Being so well
designed this was no problem at all.
<define name="db.common.attributes" combine='interleave'>
<optional>
<ref name="db.fo.style.attributes"/>
</optional>
</define>
And then of course include the main schema. This lets me add these properties to blocks and inlines as I
want. Next the stylesheet customization. This is basically adding
processing to copy over these attributes (and no more) to the XSL-FO
output.
<!-- Copy over additional attributes from schema extension -->
<xsl:template name="fo.styles" >
<xsl:copy-of select="@color"/>
<xsl:copy-of select="@font-size"/>
<xsl:copy-of select="@font-family"/>
<xsl:copy-of select="@font-variant"/>
</xsl:template>
I wanted these in a named template to retain a single point of
match, since it could become a mismatch without due care. Next to
customize the para and phrase processing to use this template.
<!-- Override of para. -->
<xsl:template match="d:para[@*[not(self::xml:id )]]">
<xsl:variable name="keep.together">
<xsl:call-template name="pi.dbfo_keep-together"/>
</xsl:variable>
<fo:block xsl:use-attribute-sets="normal.para.spacing">
<xsl:call-template name="fo.styles"/>
<xsl:if test="$keep.together != ''">
<xsl:attribute name="keep-together.within-column"><xsl:value-of
select="$keep.together"/></xsl:attribute>
</xsl:if>
<xsl:call-template name="anchor"/>
<xsl:apply-templates/>
</fo:block>
</xsl:template>
<!-- Override of phrase -->
<xsl:template match="d:phrase">
<fo:inline>
<xsl:call-template name="anchor"/>
<xsl:call-template name="fo.styles"/>
<xsl:call-template name="inline.charseq"/>
</fo:inline>
</xsl:template>
As you see, para is a little messier than phrase, but not too
bad. Same reason as before. No massive templates, just a judicious use of
partitioning makes it easy. And that is it. The main stylesheets are imported as with any
customization layer. I asked on the docbook-apps list and received no support, so I
assume this will have little interest for anyone using docbook
semantically, but for me it makes markup such as the following quite
easy.
<para><phrase font-family="gillsans" font-variant="small-caps">A
Pleasant evening</phrase>.
This produces a small-caps leader as the first sentance of a
chapter. It could be fudged using @role, though it would be less easy
were it in red, italics with the first letter a different font and size. | 
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