Graff,
update: Sorry, I think I may have misunderstood. You are actually looking for a way to take a bunch of new data (from some non-XML source, like a database or flat file) and push them out in the XML format shown in the example -- is that it? You want a template with placeholders where you can plug in fresh values.
Pretty much hots it on the head.
I don't care about the XML. To me XML is a way of structuring data that is yet another way of structuring data. The idea of XML::Simple converting the XML to a Perl structure which could be modified has worked well for me before. But sadly XML::Simple fails my simple test of simplicity. If I take some XML, parse it and then output it with no other processing, it should be the same.
That being said. I moved on and asked the question here. I suppose what I really want is the HTML::Template version of XML! The data in the XML example is a job submission. Essentially: send these message files to these recipients. I have installed XML::Twig, but at first look it is daunting, but I suspect that if I perservere it will all work out in the end.
Many thanks, John jdtoronto