How to create a federated table in MariaDB without specifying columns

I am trying to use the Federated engine of MariaDB 10.1.12 to create tables that are based on tables in a remote database. Following the MariaDB instructions about how to use the FederatedX implementation, in database db1 I create a table as

CREATE TABLE test_table (
  id     int(20) NOT NULL auto_increment,
  name   varchar(32) NOT NULL default '',
  other  int(20) NOT NULL default '0',
  PRIMARY KEY  (id),
  KEY name (name),
  KEY other_key (other))
DEFAULT CHARSET=latin1;

Now when I want to see this table in a second database db2 using the Federated engine, I can issue

CREATE TABLE test_table (
  id     int(20) NOT NULL auto_increment,
  name   varchar(32) NOT NULL default '',
  other  int(20) NOT NULL default '0',
  PRIMARY KEY  (id),
  KEY name (name),
  KEY other_key (other)
) ENGINE=FEDERATED
DEFAULT CHARSET=latin1
CONNECTION='mysql://user_x:pass_y@localhost/db1/test_table';

All this is copied from the MariaDB documentation and works well. However, if I try to create the table without explicitly duplicating the definition of the table structure - an example given in the same documentation

CREATE TABLE test_table ENGINE=FEDERATED DEFAULT CHARSET=latin1
CONNECTION='mysql://user_x:pass_y@localhost/db1/test_table';

MariaDB responds with an error

ERROR 1113 (42000): A table must have at least 1 column

Am I missing something or is it not possible to use federated tables without specifying the individual columns?