do you notice how the key points are studiously ignored? in tandem with the test-suite that i posted here, and which is available in the beta-version of my viewer-app, i posted the 11 rules of z.m.l. telling how to use plain-text to indicate the structural elements contained in the suite... the "11 rules" document is also contained in the viewer beta. since the rules were tailored to leverage existing conventions, you should find most of them to be extremely familiar to you. in addition, you might realize many of your documents are already "compliant" with z.m.l., without you doing anything. even if they aren't, the "rules" are so dirt-simple that you'll find it amazingly easy to edit your document to z.m.l. specs. this pair of documents -- the test-suite and the "rules" sheet -- when taken together tells you _precisely_ how z.m.l. operates. z.m.l. is so radically simple that a fourth-grader can create it... i'll re-posting those docs here next week, so you won't have to bother digging them up. in the meantime, enjoy the weekend... :+) -bowerbird