Legal and illegal characters
Authors are supported by context sensitive code completion that shows the type of XML element that can be inserted in the document. Some minor rules need however to be observed.
Substitution of characters
The characters "<" and "&" are strictly illegal to use inside XML elements. For example:
<rc:para> If value < 1000 then...</rc:para> must be
substituted with <rc:para> If value < 1000 then...</rc:para>
Validation errors
Illegal characters in the XML document will create validation errors that can be viewed in the validation log. For example:
Line 58: Validation fatal error xmlParseEntityRef: no name
The error message suggests that the XML document contains the illegal character "&" in plain text or a misspelled reference that doesn't exist.
Escape sequences
Escape sequences for different characters are described in the table below. Without a proper escape sequence, strange errors will turn up during validation.
| Escape sequence | Character | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| < | < | less than |
| > | > | greater than |
| & | & | ampersand |
| ' | ' | apostrophe |
| " | " | quotation mark |