Using XMLWriter writer directly is stream based and will not help you here. In Pharo 2.0 load "Pastell" (ConfigurationOfPastell) from the config browser. It also loads ConfigurationOfXMLSupport as a single dependency. This "XMLSupport" package is usually used for parsing XML and with "Pastell" you can easily access nodes like in XPath see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6fUtdQ0-5yA for a pastell video Havent tried but with "XMLSupport" I'm sure you can also manually instantiate/connect/build the nodes and document, manipulate the object tree and write out the contents as XML file later. At least there are methods like #writeXMLOn: aWriter in classes like XMLDocument XMLNodeWithChildren, ... Bye T.