for those who are interested xo-pfloat now compiles with somewhat horrible output (but never finishes the last page) xo-balance compiles and finishes basically the whole module is broken since I started to add balancing support, way back (and then got sidetrack with a couple of books). however, it is now using all the new kernel commands so it doesn't fall over with unknown syntax, which is a start. - if you want to try, you basically need all of the xor module anew (and probably some of the expl3 core as well, as i had to fix one or the other thing there too. frank