Mechanics of Editing Properties

To set style properties, you must begin by identifying the part of an equation to which they should apply by selecting it. Once an expression is selected, all the property options available for the selection become active on the Properties Menu. Choosing an option from the Properties Menu opens a dialog displaying a collection of related MathML properties that can be applied to the current selection. Within a particular properties dialog, some of the items may be disabled if they are not relevant to the current selection.

The MathML Ancestry also provides a convenient way to open property dialogs. By double-clicking an ancestry label, you can highlight the corresponding area of the current equation and simultaneously open the default Properties dialog for that selection. Each kind of MathML template has a default Properties panel, depending on what MathML properties it supports. To open other properties dialogs, you must use the Properties Menu.

Legal Property Values

In most cases, you don't need to know anything about the syntax and legal values for MathML properties. In the Editor properties dialogs, you merely make selections from pull-down menus, mark checkboxes, and so on. The two main exceptions to this rule are sizes and colors. Some table properties must also be entered directly.

Size and color values are specified using a syntax very similar to that used by Cascading Style Sheets (CSS). Since legal values can take many forms, in the property dialogs, size and color values are just text areas where you can type in any legal value. The MathFlow Editor checks what you enter, and will alert you if you enter an illegal value.

Colors can be specified either by keyword ('red', 'fuchsia') or by numerical value ('#ff0000', '#58a').  Sizes are specified by a number and a unit, or as percentages. See Size and Color Values for the precise formats used by MathFlow Editor. MathFlow Editor's online help in each property dialog also contains this information for your convenience.

Special Property Values

There are also two special property values that MathFlow uses to make property management easier. Some properties, mostly operator properties, can be set to automatic. In this case, the property value is looked up in a table of default values that depend on the character and surrounding context. These automatic values produce the typography most people expect in most situations, and are usually the default.

Specifying a value as inherited tells MathFlow that the templates and characters in the current selection should inherit their values from the template inside which they are nested. Values that are inherited from the top-level template are initialized with default values.

The concept of an inherited property value is closely tied to the idea of "sticky" and "non-sticky" font properties, described in more detail in Working with Math Properties in the Tutorials.