XSL composition refers to Arbortext Editor's ability to transform a document using XSL or XSL-FO stylesheets. XSL composition is defined by a composer. A composer is a configurable processor that transforms a document by passing it through one or more SAX filters in a filter pipeline.

Filters are classes written in Java that process an input data stream into an output data stream. The data to be processed is represented as a series of SAX events.

A pipeline is a sequence of filters. Each filter takes inputs and produces outputs that get passed to the next filter in the pipeline. A running pipeline is a closed system with a well-defined input (the source) and a well-defined output (the sink).

You specify the parameters for a composer in a composer configuration file (.ccf). The .ccf file defines composer parameters, including filter resources and the processing sequence.

You can create and edit .ccf files using the DCF Editor in Arbortext Architect (Edit > CCF). Several .ccf files are distributed with Arbortext Editor. They are located at Arbortext-path\composer.