>IOW.. It seems to me Mike that the 'bigger issue' here is "How do we construct a universal output control language?" more than anything else.

Well, as far as Reports and Data goes, MS tried that. Its the office suite. As far as I know, they thought every application should be developed using Excel and Office, for the trickier things Access, but noone should need to actually use VB or VC++.

I'm pretty sure I've heard that story, anyone?