When OpenClinica outputs ODM XML, the five basic XML entities (gt, lt, quot, amp, apos) are escaped using XML Entity notation (For example: “bread” & “butter” => "bread" & "butter").

Whitespace is represented literally linebreaks and tabs in ItemData values and other fields will be preserved.  Note that, while tabs and carriage returns are limited in the data entry side of the application, (tabs will automatically shift focus from one Item to the next, for example) all spaces and linebreaks are saved to the database, and will export into ODM XML.

Items saved in the database with non-ASCII characters will be extracted to XML entities using their ASCII decimal value equivalents; please see the next section, “OpenClinica Data Representations in ODM XML (Extract)” for an example of this.