I have created an experience document about the "bit order" issue, which was a deferred action 233, and the subject of a public comment. The document is here: http://redmine.ogf.org/dmsf_files/13268. The public comment item is http://redmine.ogf.org/boards/15/topics/43. It recommends a new dfdl:bitOrder property, and a new dfdl:byteOrder enum value, without which it is impossible to model these data formats. It also recommends several other improvements to DFDL to facilitate handling these data formats. The formats in question are a variety of MIL-STD formats which are all densely packed binary data. These formats are in broad use. MIL-STD-2045 is one part of this family and this particular format specification is generally available without any restrictions from a US DoD web site ( http://assistdocs.com) so I made this specific format the subject of the document as it illustrates all the problematic issues. We have implemented the dfdl:bitOrder property in Daffodil, and it works with some useful tests now passing. We have also enhanced our TDML implementation to enable creation of tests for this feature (and in the process actually found two bugs in the MIL-STD-2045 spec!). Both the property and this TDML enhancement are described in the document. The sponsors of the Daffodil project are extremely keen to get this needed binary support into the DFDL v1.0 standard so as to have multiple DFDL implementations support it. ...mikeb 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>