Right now complex elements can be nillable, but we have this ad-hoc restriction that says the nilValue can only be %ES;. The rationale for this is unclear to me. Can we review what the rationale for this restriction was? Does anyone recall? We have a format where the literal nil value for the complex type wants to be "%WSP*;-%WSP*;" that is, a hyphen, but with surrounding whitespace absorbed. We can model this a different way, but the natural thing to do is to model it as suggested. (This also just happens to run on Daffodil - because we're not detecting this ad-hoc restriction - a bug) Mike Beckerle | OGF DFDL Workgroup Co-Chair | Tresys Technology | www.tresys.com Please note: Contributions to the DFDL Workgroup's email discussions are subject to the OGF Intellectual Property Policy <http://www.ogf.org/About/abt_policies.php>