No character data is allowed by content model
 

Greetings, oh Wise Ones!

I have used <blockquotes> on six occasions on one of my files in my e-book. Flightcrew doesn't seem to like it :(

On each occasion </blockquote> appears I get the 'No character data is allowed by content model' message. The comment also appears twice on line 75 as well as line 76:

This my CSS:

blockquote {
margin: 2em 2em;
}

I should add, not all of the quotes are so short.

What course of action would you recommend please?

I don't think xhtml technically allows "naked" text in a blockquote. Put the text in a p or a span and see if that clears it up.

Mr / Ms DiapDealer, you are indeed a wizard!

Worked perfectly, many thanks.

PS. Check your content too:

Conquérants ? Jamais ! Inutiles? &nbsp;Sans aucun doute!

You have spaces before some ? and !, and not before the others (they should be non-breaking and thin, if possible too). And you ha non-breaking space where none should be present.

Thank you for pointing out the inconsistency. I believe the French normally put a space before these punctuation marks, so there should be one after 'doute'. I am intrigued by your suggestion that they should be thin. How is that achieved?

Unless you are using the V6 Beta, it needs to be done in Code View using the HTML entity (I recommend getting/making a handy chart of these) Section 24 of the HTML spec has one (:rolleyes: no pictures of what it looks like) http://www.w3.org/TR/1999/REC-html40.../entities.html

There are lots of other useful ones, unfortunately, some are not supported on all EPUB devices... Test them out before going crazy with use :D

I am indebted to you all again.

Many thanks.

Or use &# 8239; (without the space): thin non-breaking space.
Or use &nbsp; but make it smaller (with a span and font-size:50%).

I found this on the web about French punctuation rules: http://www.interpc.fr/mapage/billaud/ponctua.htm

If my french is good enough, it says "only one trailing space for period and comma", but leading and trailing spaces for exclamation marks, question marks, semicolons and colons. In short: if the punctuation symbol is drawn with two strokes, put two spaces, if it is drawn with one stroke, just put a trailing space. It says nothing about the witdth of spaces though, but this thread does:
http://forum.wordreference.com/showthread.php?t=656762

It seems that &thinsp; is preferable as leading space with a regular space trailing.

More info can be found here: http://forum.wordreference.com/showt...73#post3063773

@daubnet: That French link is very informative, isn't it - a really good find. Je vous remercie bien :)

@everyone: so there are two ways of creating a thin space:
&# 8239; (without the space)
&thinsp;

Is there anything to recommend one over the other?

Now that I've followed theducks entity link I presume that they are different means to an identical end?

For any special character there is always the number version and you can even enter the number as a hexadecimal digit. The number will be accepted generally even if the reading application doesn't have support for the special character name. The name of course is more descriptive. Both require a specialized font character that may not be present. This is why some people use a nbsp character which is universally accepted and then shrink it to 50% size using a span around the character. It is more work but more likely to be supported. the thinsp will need checking in the target eBook readers to ensure it isn't being replaced with a ?. There is a wiki page on Special characters.

Dale

Please do not interpret three posts in relatively rapid succession as nagging or desperation but I seem to be doing something wrong with my thin spaces.

I have used both &# 8239; (without the space) and &thinsp; at various points in my French sentence. As expected, their effect is identical. However, their effect is also unexpected!

In Sigil the thin spaces appear as a very bold, fat letter I.

In ADE the thin spaces appear as question marks.:chinscratch:

What basic, foolish error have I made now? :blink:

They are the same, just an alternate notation.

Which is more meaningful at a Glance? ;)

I guess the numeric notation would be needed when decoding User inputs from , say, a Web Form:chinscratch:

Just to be clear:

&thinsp; or &# 8201; is a normal thin space ("normal" here meaning that it is an allowed place for line breaking)
&# 8239; is a non-breaking thin space. It should be about the same size as &thinsp;, but won't allow a line break. There's no named entity for this one.

They are like a normal space and &nbsp;, respectively, but thinner.