thanks -look fwd to GUI version soon then

actually, it would be a VERY useful addition to the xml (related to the animation), to have a property on the timeline that indicated that (e.g at 00:00:02:23) the skeleton flipped x|y. This way, I could design inside the GUI and use the dopesheet to insert an 'event' that flipped the orientation of the animation until flipped back (or indeed had a duration to the inserted event).

I hope I'm clear in what I'm expressing here!?

You could do that with the event timeline, when it is done.