These two paragraphs contradict each other. When processing textual data, it is a schema definition error if the dfdl:alignment and dfdl:alignmentUnits properties are used to specify alignment that is not a multiple of the encoding-specified mandatory alignment. If the data is not aligned to the proper boundary for the encoding when textual data is processed, then bits are skipped (parsing) or filled from dfdl:fillByte (unparsing) to achieve the mandatory alignment. So is it to be SDE (conservative), or just move over to the mandatory alignment? E.g., <xs:sequence dfdl:encoding="utf-8" dfdl:alignment="7" dfdl:alignmentUnits="bits" dfdl:initiator="hello">.... The alignment property says 7 bits, but the initiator is utf-8 which requires 8 bits. So we either SDE, or we just add additional alignment bits to align the initiator text. 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>