Mike, I'm trying to buy into the proposal that the provision of default values on output is not the business of the unparser but I'm having trouble. On the face of it that sounds ok, but I'm bothered with the asymmetry with the parser, where we expect the parser to take a byte stream with absent values and fill in defaults. To be analogous with the unparser, wouldn't the parser then fire events saying 'absent' and let the receiver fill in the defaults? We'll be asked to justify this to wider audience and it needs to be defendable, I'm not sure it currently is....? Regards, Steve Steve Hanson WebSphere Message Brokers Hursley, UK Internet: smh@uk.ibm.com Phone (+44)/(0) 1962-815848 Mike Beckerle <beckerle@us.ibm.com> Sent by: dfdl-wg-bounces@ogf.org 16/08/2007 17:23 To dfdl-wg@ogf.org cc Subject [DFDL-WG] Proposal to simlify null/optional/default handling This proposal is a radical simplification of this stuff. Really collapses it massively. Please give it some thought. I did go through this with Geoff Judd who did the original research into the complexity of this area. Mike Beckerle STSM, Architect, Scalable Computing IBM Software Group Information Platform and Solutions Westborough, MA 01581 direct: voice and FAX 508-599-7148 assistant: Pam Riordan priordan@us.ibm.com 508-599-7046 -- dfdl-wg mailing list dfdl-wg@ogf.org http://www.ogf.org/mailman/listinfo/dfdl-wg Unless stated otherwise above: IBM United Kingdom Limited - Registered in England and Wales with number 741598. Registered office: PO Box 41, North Harbour, Portsmouth, Hampshire PO6 3AU