John, thanks for following up.  I myself abashedly sent out a followup mail which maybe didn't get to this list (from the other galaxy-user@lists.bx.pu.edu list).  Yes indeed, I'd closed my one-liner options tag.  Problem fixed now.

Regards,

Damion 



From: "John Chilton" <chilton@msi.umn.edu>
Sent: 01 November 2013 09:48
To:
Cc: "Galaxy Dev" <galaxy-dev@bx.psu.edu>, damion@learningpoint.ca
Subject: Re: [galaxy-dev] Tool XML form building bug with <options from_data_table="..."> ?

Hey Damion,

Because this wasn't explicitly shown in your example e-mail, can you
verify for me that you are putting the filter elements inside of the
options element and not inside of the param element?

-John