the FromBucket calls internally should use dread and so on, which advance the bucket pointer internally for themselves, but leave the pointer as it was when exited. the Apply calls internally use the FromBucket and dread calls, but in addition advance the count parameter accordingly. -----xml config thoughts----- This is the basic unit, end is optional. anything <begin> </begin> <end> </end> /anything indexable by <anything.begin/> <anything.end/> <list> anything * x, this has the same no of entries that the spec has </list> usage of <list.begin/> <list.end/> will automatically feed the val that appears in the fileformat in as an index into the list to get the appropiate <anything.begin/> (You can tell that im an xml guru eh (wish there was a ironic smily) !)