In a message dated 01/09/2006 17:42:12 GMT Daylight Time, bones@xxxxxxx writes: I presume you've seen the XML tutorials at _http://www.fs2x.com/_ (http://www.fs2x.com/) ? Yes, and on page 14 of tutorial 1 I found !s! - as we guessed, this is an instruction to output a string. Explained at last! I had not referred back to these before as they are somewhat verbose; something more like XML Gauges for Dummies would suit me! Frank T.