Hello everyone, There was recently a conversation on TeX.SX [1] between (mainly) Joseph Wright and myself. Please see that site for the full conversation that prompted this. Disclaimer: I'm a huge fan of the template idea. It is a good system and I don't want it to see unnecessary change. Disclaimer to the disclaimer: it's the only design management paradigm that I've come into contact with in regards to TeX. :) I'd like to raise attention to a possible issue with xtemplate's design. Currently, an 'object' can receive no more than nine arguments per TeX's syntax limitations: you cannot refer to a tenth argument in a macro definition. That is, \DeclareObject { foo } { 10 } will fail. In TeX terms, this makes total sense. You cannot have more than nine mandatory arguments for any single macro---that's just the way it is. But speaking in terms of design, there are instances where such an object can have more than nine arguments. In reality, this is the decision of the document designer. There should be no such limitation on the design. I'll refer you to the original post for Joseph's full answer, but his suggestion is, in my opinion, a very appropriate one: going for a completely key--value interface on the design layer (note: not the author layer). It would certainly remove the limitation on the number of mandatory qualities an object may have. It would also seem to be more befitting of the verbose clarity of the design layer to do this. I'd like to call for thoughts on the topic. Again, I strongly recommend you read Jospeh's response to my question [1]. I recognize that the premise of the question might be flawed---in this instance (no pun intended), it would likely be more appropriate to create a template with all of the 'extras'---but the concern is valid and genuine. All the best, Sean [1]: http://tex.stackexchange.com/q/196285 -- Sean Allred