what a difference a day makes. one day it's summer, and the next day it's fall. one day my alice has 159 "validation errors", and the next day none at all... if anyone needs a copy of my .html alice that will pass the validator, request it backchannel. i can generate it with the flip of a few switches in my conversion routine, so it's really no trouble. i understand the need for project gutenberg to require "validation" to ensure _some_ kind of "minimum standard" from the files they get from a multitude of different sources. so i understand if some of you out there would care about that... but from my standpoint, the preoccupation with "passing" the "validator" that some people have is just another "small behavior modification" ritual the technoids require if you wanna be in their cult. and ya know what? i ain't interested in joining. i will continue to be far more concerned with how well the e-book works for the end-user, rather than the "political correctness" of the markup, and whether i might've "sinned" by "abusing" some tag to get a desired effect... in the meantime, it certainly is entertaining to see how worked up some people can get when you use an [i] tag instead of an [em]. :+) it throws them into a _tizzy_, it does, and when you toss in a couple [br /] tags too, they get so agitated it becomes a frenzy. it is a triumph of power-struggle ("you must do it so") over functionality. (does this code do what it should?) -bowerbird