Hi. I tried to report this to bugzilla, but it seems to be down. According to the apidocs, the method <newTransformer(Source)> in class <javax.xml.transform.TransformerFactory> [1] is never supposed to return <null>. But if you register an <ErrorListener> to the <TransformerFactory>, the error listener gets the exception, and <null> is returned. IMO it's a bug in the apidocs, as the behavior is quite logical, and the overview page [2] points out the apidocs version <Alpha, 2.0.0, July 05, 2000>. [1] http://xml.apache.org/xalan-j/apidocs/javax/xml/transform/ TransformerFactory.html#newTransformer(javax.xml.transform.Source) [2] http://xml.apache.org/xalan-j/apidocs/overview-summary.html Regards. -- Bjoern Martin [EMAIL PROTECTED]