by the way, the idea brought forward by Will of taking the defaults out could also be provided in any of the proposed implementation: a template could define defaults but one could envision to additionally at a later stage overwrite and replace those defaults. This is fairly independed concept to the rest of the syntax discussion so should probably also discussed separately. The problem with default settings at different stages is to come up with a model that describes how they should apply. Currently key defaults get used and thus become "real" values the moment a template is instantiated, i.e., if we have above-skip =L [0pt] \caption_above_skip , then doing \DeclareInstance{caption}{figure-caption}{lesssimple}{} is equivalent to \DeclareInstance{caption}{figure-caption-ii}{lesssimple}{ above-skip=0pt } and there would be no way to distinguish them later on other than by the fact that I gave them two different names above). I'm not saying that this has to be the case, only that this what current template and i guess template-alt does. consequentially, if we have a way to alter the default of a template, eg \ChangeTemplateDefaults{caption}{lesssimple} { above-skip = 4pt } that would have no effect on the "figure-caption" if it comes after that instance got declared. thus changing such defaults say in a document preamble would be a fairly useless exercise. of course things could be done differently: a instance could somehow record that a default is to be used and then finalize it only at begin document or always instantiate it when the instance is used or ... but any of these schemes seem to me would only lead to chaos. After all then it is absolutly not clare when something would be affected and when not (eg figure-caption-ii shouldthen not be affected as in that instance the default has been explicitly overwritten by a value evne though it was the same as the default). for that reason I think the current scheme for defaults is about right. if so, then being able to alter the default of a template would still have its place and I think it would be a valid addition to a future implementation, but it would only be used on layer 1 when setting up document classes, ie prior to definining instances and there it would help to better structure the design. For example, by setting the defaults for fonts just once all near to each other, rather than repeating them over and over again when specifying the instances. But it would not be usable or intended to make changes to a design in a document preamble. frank