Are delimiters implicitly text in the sense of being aligned to an 8-bit boundary? E.g., if I have <element name="threeBits" type="xs:byte" dfdl:alignmentUnits="bits" dfdl:alignment="1" dfdl:lengthUnits="bits" dfdl:length="{3}" dfdl:terminator="%#x55;"/> Does that terminator byte of 0x55 begin at bit 4, immediately after the last bit of the content region, or does it implicitly move up to bit 8? I know the answer if instead of a terminator, the threeBits had no terminator but was followed by an element of type xs:string. Text always has byte alignment (at least). But what about initiators/terminators/separators which are allowed in binary data. I know I really want the answer here to be that we treat delimiters as text always, so byte alignment (minimum). But I don't think the spec discusses the possibility of non-byte alignment of delimiters. ...mikeb -- Mike Beckerle | OGF DFDL WG Co-Chair Tel: 781-330-0412