17. Property Ledger & Support

Every property is name: value; — dash-case, positional, space-separated values (SPEC 3). This section is the one place that answers which property works where.

A property applies everywhere by default; the exceptions are marked. An exception is always one of two kinds: type-owned — a property a primitive requires or reads (points on |line|, symbol on |icon|, skew on |slant|) — or layout-owned — a property an engine interprets (cell on a grid, place on a sequence note, data on a chart).

Validation is strict where the wearer is known, lenient where a class is polymorphic (messages in SPEC 21):

• An unknown property name is an error, everywhere — even in a class rule; no owner accepts it. The message suggests the nearest name.
• A known property misused where its wearer is statically known — an instance’s own block, an element rule (|box| { }, |-| { }), an id rule, a descendant rule’s tail, the root block — is an error with a contextual correction: points on a |box|, cell: off a grid, a box property on bare text, a layout’s own surface used outside it (SPEC 21). A layout-owned property errors where its owning layout is statically known to be absent, and is inert otherwise.
• In a .class rule the CSS semantics hold: a property is inert on wearers that can’t use it; it warns only when it is dead for every wearer, and a defined class no node wears warns too.
• A malformed value (wrong arity, out of range) is an error, wearer-independent.

State marks used below: ✓ built and honoured · ⌛ meaningful but not built, a candidate (SPEC 24) · — not applicable.

The container × layout matrix

The high-signal grid: which container / layout property each engine honours. (Paint, text, and box-model properties are universal to every node — the tables that follow.)

✓ᵇ — honoured on the participant / frame boxes’ own content (they are ordinary boxes), but not by the sequence engine’s placement of them on the time axis (SPEC 11). A chart / pie consumes its children into marks, so that case does not arise — hence —.

A floorplan reads the drawing column — the same engine (SPEC 15.11). A stack reads it too, minus the drafting rows: the placement is the one a drawing is built on (SPEC 12), so the arranger knobs are — and padding, the sizing pair and the container’s own paint are honoured.

Universal properties

Honoured on every drawn node, in every layout (a box; text takes the marked subset).

Paint & stroke (SPEC 6, colour SPEC 10):

Text — all inherit (SPEC 6); text-valid on a bare string:

Box model & placement (SPEC 5):

Media & accessibility — any node (href also a link):

Type-owned properties

Read on the listed primitive; required where noted (SPEC 7).

Grid, tree, chart, pie, sequence, drawing, floorplan & schematic properties

Layout-owned — an error only where a hard gate exists (SPEC 21); otherwise inert out of scope.

Link properties

A link is styled like a node (SPEC 9) — its wire takes stroke*, its labels the text props. Its own properties: