Bowerbird, I hope you don't mind if I snip your long post. I was unable to find specific sections which would make for a suitable reply so I reply here to your post as a whole. The flaw in your argument, I find, is your suggestion that since PG's XML teams have so far failed to produce any output, XML must be a bad strategy for PG. Your ZML-based strategy has brought forth results and so is better. What is XML? XML is merely a method for devising markup languages. No more, no less. If one project uses XML and, coincidentally, happens to be slow, while another does not and happens to be faster, that does not mean we can attribute such a speed difference to the different languages used, particularly when other factors differ between the two projects. Why has your ZML-based project brought forth results so quickly while others have not? Simply because you are doing a different task to them. Your project is essentially taking standard PG texts and automatically formatting them. From what I've read of the XML team's efforts, they are going back to the original books to ensure they get the formatting from the original books. There is, of course, a trade-off. Going back to the original books to get missing formatting information is extremely time consuming but guarantees accurate results. Your approach does not guarantee accurate results, but settles for well formatted results in most cases, the advantage of which is that it is fast. Blaming a slow start on XML is to miss the point. The XML team could just as well use automatic transformations to convert from PG texts to their XML format, if they chose to. However, their opinion (they are correct) is that such automatic translations as you are using can not capture the full complexity of each book and will not work on every book. Moreover, choosing/defining a suitable format which is capable of retaining every formatting nuance of any given text is not an enviable task. So, please take this as my plea for calm. You and the XML team are working towards different goals. This is not a zero-sum game. If either team produces a great product, it does not come at the expense of the other team. If anything, why not just stop trying to disparage the other team and just get on with producing texts in the best way that you know? Regards, Holden