34 FileMaker Pro Advanced Development Guide
XML editors expect these characters to be coded as character entities:
Using the character instead of the character entity results in an error
from the XML editor. However, FileMaker Pro and FileMaker Pro
Advanced do not reinterpret character entities. Values in the
THEMENAME element will appear exactly as typed. You can avoid
the problem by using a text editor to create your themes or by ignoring
the error from the XML editor. Your theme names will appear as you
write them in the New Layout/Report assistant.
If you’re planning to use your themes on Windows and Mac OS X
platforms, use the HINT attribute to ensure that upper-ASCII
characters (such as the accent mark) appear correctly on both
platforms. For more information, see
“Valid values for theme
attributes” on page 37.
Removing elements from theme files
Theme files contain multi-line elements for fields, field labels, text,
and every part in a layout. Each of these elements contains other
multi-line elements and single-line elements. You can remove any of
these elements, but you must remove the entire element, which
includes everything inside the element’s start and end tags and the
start and end tags as well.
FileMaker Pro Advanced will use default values for any elements you
remove. See
“Specifying default values for themes” on page 40.
A single-line element, such as the PEN element, begins with <PEN and
ends with
/> on a single line:
<PEN COLOR="#000066" PATTERN="2" SIZE="0" />
A multi-line element has start and end tags on separate lines:
<BORDER>
</BORDER>
To remove a multi-line element, delete the start and end tags and all
elements contained within them. For example, to remove a multi-line
BORDER element in the Blue_gold.fth file, delete all three lines:
<BORDER>
<PEN COLOR="#000000" PATTERN="2" SIZE="1" />
</BORDER>
XML elements for layout parts
An FMTHEME element can contain any of the following multi-line
elements to describe the parts in a layout. Each layout part element
contains additional elements to describe the background fill, text, field
labels, and fields in the layout part.
Elements for layout parts can be listed in any order within an
FMTHEME element in the XML document. However, if two identical
elements are listed (such as two BODYPART elements),
FileMaker
Pro Advanced will only use the attributes for the last one in
the list.
Character Coded as
ampersand (&) &
less than (<) <
greater than (>) >
apostrophe (‘) '
quote (“) "
This multi-lined
element is used To describe this layout part
<TITLEHEADERPART>
</TITLEHEADERPART>
Title header — appears only once at the top
of the first screen or page.
<HEADERPART>
</HEADERPART>
Header — appears at the top of every screen
or page, except the first one if there’s a title
header.
