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→Decide on the implementation: addendum on language features
* debugging:
:Our distribution is packaged with an HTML page with a text box. You can type an input program into the text box, and the output navigation bar is displayed below. If there is an error, the error message is displayed instead of the navigation bar.
==Addendum: succinct description of all language features==
The formatting declaration inside the curly braces can contain any CSS properties you desire, which will be passed and set to the nav bar items' <nowiki><a> and <span></nowiki> tags. A number of special keywords allow additional features. Namely:
*layout determines the direction of the navigation bar. choices are horizontal/vertical; horizontal default.
*hover allows you to specify CSS attributes which apply to nav bar elements only when they are hovered over (i.e. the a:hover and span:hover CSS selectors). uses exact same syntax as the "normal" formatting declaration.
*direction determines the direction of submenus (i.e. items with level > 1) relative to their parent item. valid choices are right, left, above, below, and same. The last is the default and does not create pop-out menus.
*marker specifies a marker which precedes all nav bar items. either 'none', 'dot', or any HTML entity such as <nowiki>☞</nowiki>; none default.
*layout-width specifies the width of the nav bar for vertical nav bars. default is 100% as per standard CSS.
*element-style specifies the style of the nav bar item. current either 'rounded-tab' or 'regular'; latter is default.
In general, formatting specs are inherited in much the same way as in CSS when a class name is appended to the element's class field. In particular, this means that children of any given element will inherit all of its properties unless they are manually overridden. Furthermore, the first time a level (i.e. *, **, ***, etc.) appears, its formatting declaration (including a lack of one) is made as that level's "prototype" formatting specification. All further items in the same nav bar with the same level will have the same formatting, as will their children, unless they are overridden themselves.
However, it is possible to override this prototype inheritance on a per-branch basis by specifying a different formatting spec before beginning the branch (i.e. as if declaring a prototype for the first time). Note that this override will complement the existing prototype, so any values not explicitly overridden will be inherited as usual. Such an override lasts for the duration of the branch in which it was introduced and is discarded once the branch is complete.
Consider and play with the following example to get a hands-on demo of how these concepts interact:
<pre><nowiki>{ color: #82c753; background: #6d6d6d; text-decoration: none; padding: 0.35em 0.5em;
hover: { background: white; text-decoration: underline; };
layout: vertical; layout-width: 10em; }
*One | /one.htm
{ color: #84b6d5; marker: ☞ }
**Two | /two.htm
*Fun | /fun/
{ background: white; }
**Funtwooverride | /override
***Third level | /goodtimes.htm
{ background: gray; }
****Fourth | /four
*Oneback | /oneback
{ marker: dot; }
**Choo choo | /choo
***Overrides | /woo
****Gray | /gray
</nowiki></pre>
