Terminology

Status: Current. Reference for template authors, developers and maintainers.

Use these names consistently when discussing Allors Documents. This page records the shared vocabulary and links to the pages that own the detailed definitions. Exact API identifiers keep their declared spelling and capitalization.

Templates and tags

Term	Definition and usage
Template	An OpenDocument text, a package (.odt) or a flat document (.fodt), that holds tags. It is read once and rendered any number of times. See Tags.
Tag	The text in a placeholder field or a picture description that the library reads: <$path> with attributes, or <@keyword>. See Tags.
Placeholder field	The Writer field (Insert, Field, More Fields, Functions, Placeholder) that holds a tag in the text.
Binding	A <$path> tag that prints the value at its path. Use binding for the tag and value for what it prints.
Path	A chain of member names separated by dots, such as Invoice.Customer.Name; inside a loop it may start with a loop variable.
Block	A loop or a condition: the paragraphs or table rows between its begin tag and <@end>. A condition may have else branches.
Loop variable	The name a <@for> tag declares for the item at hand; a counter is the name its index attribute declares. See Loops.
Attribute	A named value after the path of a tag, such as format="N2". See Attributes.
Document settings	The custom document properties of a template that carry its formatting defaults. See Document settings.
Formatting layers	The library’s defaults, the caller’s settings, the template’s document settings and the tag’s attributes, in that order; the last layer wins. See Formatting.
Pattern	A .NET format string for dates, times, date-times and numbers; date, time, datetime and number name the document’s patterns. See Formatting.
Map	A two-column table whose first cell holds <@map Name>; a binding prints through it with map="Name". See Maps.
Picture tag	The <$path> tag in the description of a picture frame, with the empty and fit attributes. See Pictures.
Frame	The picture frame as the author drew it in Writer. Qualify a text frame when the context could be ambiguous.
Part	One XML file of a template: content.xml for the body, styles.xml for the styles with the headers and footers. A flat document is split into the same parts.

Models and rendering

Term	Definition and usage
Model	What a render binds the template to: a dictionary of roots, a plain class, or a host’s own objects read through a resolver.
Shape	The static view of a model that Validate walks: the members a value has, whether it is a collection, the shape of its items and the variants of an abstract shape. See Resolve your own model.
Resolver	The runtime view a render reads through: how a member is read, iterated, tested, formatted, ordered and turned into a picture. See Resolve your own model.
Render settings	The caller’s resolver, cultures, patterns and output form for a render. See API.
Render result	The rendered document and the findings of the render. See API.
Inspection	What a template asks of its model, read without a model: the tags, the bound pictures, the maps, the document settings and the problems. See API.
Validation	The check of a template against a shape, without rendering: the findings and the inspection they came from. See Validate templates.
Finding	One thing wrong or doubtful, in the author’s terms: its kind, severity, the tag as typed, the path, a message and the location. See Findings.
Lenient rendering	A render never throws for what the template says: what the model cannot give prints blank and is reported as a finding. Only a template whose blocks cannot be rendered throws, when it is read.
Package and flat document	The two forms of an OpenDocument text: a zip package (.odt) and one XML file with the pictures embedded (.fodt). See Flat documents.
Formatting	The effective cultures, patterns and words at a tag, the result of the formatting layers; also the name of the type that carries them. See Formatting.
Renderer	Planned: a display transformation of one value that a tag selects by name in its format attribute, such as upper-case text or a barcode, registered by the caller. See Renderers and picture processing. The type inside the library that renders a program is named Renderer too; the architecture page qualifies it.
Picture processor	Planned: the step between a picture’s bytes and the package that scales or converts a picture for its frame, registered by the caller. See Renderers and picture processing.

Inside the library

Term	Definition and usage
Program	A rendering part of a template prepared for rendering: its DOM with every tag replaced by an instruction, built once per template and walked by every render. See Architecture.
Instruction	A tag in a program: what it says and where it sits, for the findings a render reports.
Scope	The loop variables and counters a path may start with at a point of a render or a validation, innermost first, before the root.