David Gray wrote: > > In a (probably) vain attempt to help you to understand, > > > 4) If you believe that any discussion that ultimately ends up not > coming to a conclusion > > that you agree with is a waste of time, then I really can't help. > > The reason for my earlier posting was not to continue to try to persuade you > (you cannot persuade people who are not open to persuasion) but to point out > that you had allowed the discussion to continue, knowing that you had no > intention of even considering any change. Sorry David, but upon this point you are simply wrong. If people are going down a path that cannot result in a change, I'll tell them up front that they are wasting their time. If I say that there is merit in discussing something, then that is no guarantee that change will result. On the particular issue. there are various options that we could consider; 1) Omitting Periods is wrong and not acceptable. 2) Omitting Periods is wrong, but acceptable. 3) Omitting Periods is right, but including them is acceptable. 4) Omitting Periods is right and including them is not acceptable. That seems to cover the options that are open to us. I am saying that options 3 and 4 are discounted. It *is* wrong to omit the periods. We are however strongly persuaded that omitting a period is not sufficiently wrong to warrant rejecting affected files. Effectively, the position is that the period should be included, but that we will accept files where it has been omitted. We are just scoping the work involved to ensure that the database load can work round the problem. -- Dave Mayall