Terminal layout and controls#

The interactive reader lays out the validated component tree in integer terminal cells. It never interprets browser styles, scripts, expressions or publisher escape sequences. Ordinary links and Navigate buttons retain the existing verified navigation workflow. Focus and Scroll buttons act only on named scrollboxes in the current document. No action runs automatically when the page opens.

Layout#

Columns flow vertically, with their declared padding and gaps. A Row keeps its children side by side when every child can receive minChildColumns, including the spaces between children. Remaining cells are distributed by Column weight; other child types have weight 1. Integer rounding favours document order. A narrow row stacks children in the same order and uses its gap between stacked children.

Panels draw a label and border around their padded content. Panel and ScrollBox accept border: Light, Heavy, Double, Rounded or Ascii. Omitted and null values inherit through enclosing containers; the root defaults to Light. Separators inherit the same family. A divider spanning the full content width extends through its enclosing panel's padding and meets the sides with matching junctions. A narrower divider inside a padded or partial-width child remains inset. Nested panels retain independent rectangles; adjacent panels do not form a shared grid. See HyperPage for the finite glyph families. ScrollBox rows selects its content viewport height, with a separate label and border. Every scrollbox retains its own offset during scrolling and resizing. Its descendants are clipped before terminal output, including nested scrollboxes and buttons. A page cannot overwrite the approval status or reader controls outside its content rectangle.

Text wraps by Unicode grapheme clusters and display width. A grapheme wider than its available row is replaced by ?; no partial wide character is painted. Combining clusters without a display cell are escaped. The --ascii option overrides every generated border with ASCII glyphs and renders non-ASCII characters as explicit code-point escapes before measuring them. Terminal font and Unicode support can still vary; use ASCII mode when needed. Deeply nested borders shrink to their available width without crossing a parent.

The active viewport is at most 300 columns by 120 rows, even on larger terminals. Layout retains at most 262144 terminal cells across its intermediate and final buffers. Browser navigation refuses a page that exceeds this bound and retains the previous view. A resize failure keeps trusted recovery controls available; shrinking the terminal retries layout. Plain output remains available. Preview wide and narrow layouts before publishing. Very small terminals request resizing. Static pages redraw only after input or resize. Motion starts only through an explicit reader action and remains bounded and client-side; there is no background refresh. See MediaViewer.

Keyboard#

When no control is selected, scrolling keys move the whole page. Moving focus reveals its first line through every enclosing viewport. Resize keeps the same control and clamps offsets to the new layout. Scrolling can subsequently move that control out of view; Tab reveals the next control. A local Scroll button changes its named viewport without implicitly moving focus. Global reader keys remain available in every control.

A native form field opens a separate local editor. Its input cannot become browser shortcuts. Submit opens the trusted confirmation screen described in Forms; it never sends directly from page content. Draft previews and foreign pages display form fields without accepting input.

The i view is reader-owned. It shows all retained approval, network, identity and source metadata, plus the selected action and its complete wrapped destination. Its scrolling is independent of page content. A clipped footer is a summary; inspect this details view before following a long destination. External HTTPS references remain display-only under the existing navigation policy.

The Browser retains per-page focus and scroll state across Back. It adds trusted catalogue, address and help views. An unchanged exact publication keeps its view on Refresh; a changed publication resets document state. Local preview and moderation use the same layout without network navigation.

Colour and plain output#

Pages may use Default and the terminal's sixteen logical foreground colours. Container colour is inherited unless a child selects another colour; headings are bold. Pages cannot redefine the palette or set arbitrary terminal colours. Actual contrast depends on the terminal theme. Selection uses a trusted reverse attribute and labels remain present without colour.

Monochrome uses the terminal's default foreground while retaining emphasis and selection. A nonempty NO_COLOR environment variable forces monochrome, including when m is pressed. ASCII mode changes text representation independently of colour.

Plain output, pipes and TERM=dumb print all flattened content in document order, including text clipped in scrollboxes and every action destination. They emit no terminal styling and perform no action. Moderation and accessibility workflows can therefore inspect the complete document without visiting each viewport.

Normal exit and handled interrupt, termination and hangup signals restore terminal attributes, cursor visibility and the alternate screen. Forced process termination, a process abort or terminal failure cannot guarantee restoration; stty sane and reset recover a shell terminal.