Glossary

Look anything up here. Terms are grouped by where you meet them, and the three genuine collisions are called out, because each is a word doing more than one job.

The three words that collide

Canvas means three different things, and context is the only way to tell them apart.

1. The light or dark version of a deck. “Check both canvases” means check the deck in light mode and in dark mode. This is the theme track’s meaning, and by far the most common.
2. A Form value — canvas is one of the shapes a component can select, meaning one undivided block. statement.canvas is a component that puts a single block on the slide.
3. --fin-canvas, a token naming the surface a particular slide is painting. Usually the same as --bg, and deliberately not on the three dark bookends.

Layer likewise:

1. The four backdrop layers of a finish — wash, texture, mark, edge. These genuinely stack.
2. The three “layers” of the categorical contrast contract. These do not stack; they are three tests each color has to pass. Named for the contract, kept here because you will meet the phrase in the repo.
3. The three things a deck is dressed in — theme, component, finish. Separable, not stacked.

Axis:

1. Function, Form, Substance, Finish — the four axes a slide is decided along.
2. capacity.axis — what a component counts, from a fixed set of five.
3. The brand axis — the two or three anchor colors a theme is built from. Informal; not something the engine reads.

Themes

Term	What it means
Theme	One CSS file of colors. Also called a palette.
Palette	The same thing. The site header’s picker uses this word.
Token	A named color, written --like-this. The name is a role, not a color.
Role	What a token is for — --text-body is “the color body prose is set in”, not “dark gray”.
Ink	The colors text is set in. Seven of them, loudest to quietest.
Surface	The colors things are painted on: the page, cards, the dark bookends.
Accent	The brand color, plus its pale wash and the ink that goes on top.
Signal	Success, warning, failure — three inks and three tinted grounds.
Categorical	The twelve colors a chart or diagram cycles through.
Contrast ratio	How different two colors are in lightness. 21:1 is black on white.
light-dark()	A CSS function naming both canvases at once: light value first, dark second.
Manifest	themes/<name>.manifest.json — the palette’s identity. No colors except one swatch for the picker.

Components

Term	What it means
Component	A named arrangement for one slide, selected with <!-- _class: name -->.
Frame	The cut that divides a slide — into columns, a grid, a band over a body.
Cell	One piece the cut leaves. An empty, sized box.
Tile	What fills a Cell — your heading, your list, your quote.
Stage	.cell-stage, the Cell your content lands in. Where component CSS attaches.
Masthead	.cell-masthead, the Cell holding the heading. The engine owns it.
Sovereign	A layout that takes neither Cell and owns the whole page — title, image and eight others.
Slot	A named part of a component, mapped to a CSS selector.
Skeleton	The smallest slide that uses a component. What “insert component” gives you.
Capacity	How many items a layout holds before it stops working.
Density	How much text fits inside one of those items.
Escalation target	The component to move to when you exceed capacity.
Bucket	The folder family a component lives in. Thirteen of them.
Substance	What the author writes: prose, structure, series, or graph.
Transform	Code that rebuilds the markdown into different elements before CSS lays it out.
Variant	A modifier that changes a component without replacing it.
Reflow	Rearranging for a different page shape, keyed on data-family.

Finishes

Term	What it means
Finish	A backdrop painted behind the words. Selected with finish: in front matter.
Backdrop	The layer the engine adds inside each finished slide, where the finish paints.
Wash	Layer 1 — an ambient field of color.
Texture	Layer 2 — a repeating pattern.
Mark	Layer 3 — a placed emblem, like a monogram.
Edge	Layer 4 — what happens at the rim: a vignette, a rule, a frame.
Screen face	The version a browser shows, fading to transparent.
Opaque face	The -opaque twin used for print and export, ending on a real color.
Register	The list of recognized finish: names. Adding one is a row in it.
Mode	A separate front-matter key for the deck’s handwriting — boardroom, sketch or sketch-clean. Not a finish.

Words that are not Lattice’s

Term	What it means
Front matter	The --- block at the top of a markdown file, holding deck-wide settings.
WCAG AA	The accessibility standard most organizations are held to. 4.5:1 for text.
Specificity	How a browser breaks a tie between two CSS rules that both apply — the more precisely a rule names its target, the higher it scores.
color-mix()	A CSS function that blends two colors, used so a finish never names one.
Mermaid	The diagram syntax Lattice renders inside a fenced code block.