I've posted version 017 of the internal draft core spec. to the gridforge site. Here is the URL: https://forge.gridforum.org/sf/docman/do/viewDocument/projects.dfdl-wg/docma... I'd like to ask people to review it with an eye towards whether the semantics part is clear enough or at least getting there. The major accomplishment in this draft was folding together some of Geoff's material on defaults/nulls/missing/optional (especially the input flow-charts) into the parse-strategies technique so as to illustrate that the parse-strategies framework I had put in was capable of handling this complexity. This spec is really now getting to the limit of what I can do in MS-Word. I.e., there's too much stuff in here that really needs to be developed as code in a programming language to insure there are no errors in it. Assuming the semantics framework is now ok, the next work is really cranking out actual parse and length strategy and conversion definitions, and this is going to be very error prone unless done in some type-checked and executable form. ...mikeb 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