title: How can I create a two column layout with XSL-FO and FOP 1.0?
body: <p>I've got a piece of software that creates an <code>XSL-FO</code> description from a text file and converts that into a PDF document. Each line in the text file is converted to a <code>fo:block</code> in FO, which sounds wrong, but I cannot change that right now. My document contains 1 to 3 pages of A4.</p>
  
  <p>What I now need to do is add a graphic that is about 8cm in width below the existing text. It should be left-aligned. Next to it I want to place a block of text with a (long) description.</p>
  
  <p><img src="https://i.stack.imgur.com/c0H4D.png" alt="Layout example"></p>
  
  <p>I've looked at a couple of documentations for FO and came up with this:</p>
  
  <pre><code>&lt;fo:block intrusion-displace="block" margin-top="20mm"&gt;
   &lt;fo:float float="right"&gt;
     &lt;fo:block margin-left="20mm"&gt;
      Bacon ipsum dolor sit amet laborum proident...
     &lt;/fo:block&gt;
   &lt;/fo:float&gt; 
    &lt;fo:external-graphic src="image.png"/&gt; 
  &lt;/fo:block&gt;
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>This seemed to be what I wanted (after some fine-tuning of course), but unfortunately FOP <a href="http://xmlgraphics.apache.org/fop/compliance.html#fo-object-float" rel="nofollow noreferrer">does not support</a> <code>fo:float</code> yet. </p>
  
  <p>There also seems to be a way to create multiple columns (without a table), but I have not been able to figure out how that works. One seems to need a new page for that, but I need to use the current page if there is space available (which I do not have to care about I guess).</p>
  
  <p>So my question: <strong>Is there another way to build this without using <code>fo:float</code>?</strong></p>