Problem with Table Continuation variable

[JohannesKrueger]

When saving a structured document to XML, the Table Continuation variable is translated to an entity named "fm.tcont".

Strangely, the content of the entity is a control character (0x11). The file is saved as XML, but the parser returns an error,

Error at file d:\test\100219\doc_test.xml.1F0, line 31, char 22, Message: Invalid character (Unicode: 0x11)
Error at line 31, char 24, Message: Expected a literal entity value or PUBLIC/SYSTEM identifier
Parse error at line 31, char 20: Not well-formed (invalid token)
Parsing aborted.

The content of the variable is nothing suspicious, just " (continued)", where the first character is a normal space.

Did anyone encounter the same problem and knows how to fix it?

This is on FM8.0p277 on Windows XP.

Thanks a lot in advance,

Johannes

[Van Kurtz · Accepted solution]

Johannes,

I do not have the direct answer, because I never tried it. But my EDD has a TableContinuation element that is empty; the EDD inserts the table continuation variable. When exported to XML, the element is there as a "marker"; it has NO content. When opened in Frame, the EDD inserts the variable again. My reasoning is that the table continuation variable has meaning ONLY within FrameMaker; it is a formatting object, not a content container. Any postprocessing of the XML would not need it; if it did, then ITS engine could provide what it is able to understand.

Anyway, this is how I deal with it.

Good luck,
Van

[JohannesKrueger]

Thanks very much, Van. Placing the variable in an element, as you suggested, did the trick and works very well.

You're also absolutely right that the actual content of the table continuation variable is nothing you'd normally need to export, as it is part of the template or stylesheet. A placeholder is sufficient. By mentioning the content of the variable I rather wanted to indicate there were obviously no special characters that might have been translated to the troublesome control character.