Are there XML tags to add a line break and/or a blank line?

Hi Tom, Define.xml standard

Hi Tom, 

Define.xml standard represents metadata. It's designed to store information only. Unfortunately no formatting including format specific characters (like <new line>) are available in "pure data".

Kind Regards, 

Sergiy

Line breaking in define.xml

Sergiy is right: XML is about data, not about presentation.
The presentation (including line breaks) is taken care of by the stylesheet.

There is a lot you can do in the stylesheet for presenting the data as you would like to see themin the browser (BTW, the stylesheet is the submittors responsibility, the one from CDISC is ONLY an examle). For example, it is pretty easy to define in the stylesheet that in any text longer than N characters, the dot at the end of a sentence must be translated into an HTML line break (<br/>). There are also many things you can do, like adding "instructions" in the define.xml itself, and then have these translated into presentation elements by the stylesheet.

You can always contact privately for more details.

Line breaks in define.xml

I have seen people adding characters like "~" to their data, and let stylesheets replace those characters with an HTML linebreak (<br />). Please don't do that. When your data will be viewed outside of the stylesheet, or with a different stylesheet, you will suddenly see those strange characters in the data.  In case it is essential that the text is formatted, it is better to have a reference to a document witrh formatted text, such as a PDF document.

Hello Both, Thank you for

Hello Both,

Thank you for your quick replies, your help is much appreciated.

Tom

Hello Lex, This is very

Hello Lex,

This is very useful information.  I'm working on creating a define.XML for an integrated database (close to 20 studies), so some of the derivations can be a bit long.  My initial recommedation to the team was to link to a pdf document or documents.  The team decided to use the cells available in the define (methods, comments, VL metatdata) as the place to hold the derivation text.  Your reply will save us a lot of time in making our decision.

Thank you!

Tom

Line breaks in define.xml

Hi Tom,

I'm glad I could help. The great thing about Define-XML v2 is that you can define the metadata in the document references in such a way that the stylesheet can create links to specific pages or named destinations in a PDF file. In this way the link can go to the exact location in the document. You can just use one document for all the derivations. Such a document could be modeled after the Reviewer Guides as developed by PhUSE (http://www.phuse.eu/CSS-deliverables.aspx).

Lex