1. A computer readable medium having stored thereon: computer executable instructions for generating instances of a document based on a template structured according to a schema, the schema comprising: a template root element, wherein the template root element comprises: a template information element containing descriptive information about the template root element, wherein the descriptive information includes at least one of a title, free-form text, and a document type element to support a type element from another schema or document type definition; a data table element configured to contain data that is used to transform an abstract instance of a document template to a concrete instance of a document template, to determine the number of instances of a document template to be replicated, and to assign a data value to a data target; and an instances element containing at least one instance element, the instances element describing how an individual instance of the document is constructed, the instance element including an instance data table element and at least one continuations element; wherein the continuations element is configured to define continuation handling for data included in the data table element, the instance data table element, or both, and configured to include one or more continuation elements and one or more overflow default elements; and wherein at least one continuation element is configured to process overflows by placing data on more than one page.