number of characters in a Running H/F variable?

[Fred Ridder]

huntleye at gmail.com asked:
 
> Does anybody know the limit on the number of characters for a Running H/F
> variable? I am guessing 255 or 256 as I think I've encountered it. Also, is
> it purely a display problem or is that the effective lenghth of the
> variable?
 
There *is* a size limit for explicitly defined user variables (255 characters in
the definition, including any formatting building blocks), but I'm not sure
that the limit applies to reference-based system variables. I just created 
a test document, with a 12-line paragraph referenced by the Running H/F 
variable, and Frame picked up all of the paragraph's text in the header 
(as soon as I made the header frame large enough to display all of it). 
 
I think the only way you might run afoul of the size limit for variables 
in the case of system variables is in the *definition* of the variable. 
For example, if you have a Running H/F variable that uses the $paratext
building block with a list of a dozen or so paragraph tags, each of 
which has a fairly long tag name, you could exceed 255 characters 
*in the defintion*. But the length of the referenced content doesn't 
seem to matter.
 
Fred Ridder
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