15. Glossary

Definitions below are authoritative. Where a term is also defined in CommonMark, the MdFlow definition supersedes within MdFlow contexts.

AST (Abstract Syntax Tree). The tree of nodes produced by the parser from tokens. See §3.4.

Attribute. A (name, value) pair attached to a custom-element node. See §3.4.4.

Batch conformance. Conformance class for implementations that consume a complete source in a single pass. See §2.2.1.

Block. A node whose kind is in the block catalogue. See §6.1.

Blank line. A line containing only U+0009, U+000B, U+000C, U+0020. See §4.3.

Canonical form. The reference HTML mapping used for vector comparisons. See §3.7.

Chunk. A contiguous byte range of source passed to push(). See §5.1.

Class B. The Batch conformance class. See §2.2.1.

Class S. The Streaming conformance class. See §2.2.2.

Complete token. A token whose slice is final. See §5.3.

Conformance claim. A statement that an implementation satisfies a named conformance class and target. See §2.6.

Conforming implementation. An implementation that satisfies all normative clauses for a claimed class and passes the corresponding vectors. See §2.

Container. A node that MAY have children. See §3.2.

Custom element. An element whose tag matches the pattern [a-z][a-z0-9]*-[a-z0-9-]* and that appears in the registered whitelist. See §8.

Document. The root node of an AST. See §3.4.1.

DOM. The host rendering target. See §3.5.

Event-only element. A custom element that produces no DOM and instead emits an event record. See §12.1.

Extension. A plugin or specification that adds constructs or tags to MdFlow. See §9.

Filter. A normative pre-processing of a URL or attribute value defined in §10.3.

Finalization. Transition of a pending token to complete state. See §5.3.

Flush. The producer call that signals end-of-input. See §5.5.

Inline. A node whose kind is in the inline catalogue. See §7.1.

Interactive element. A custom element whose DOM subtree holds mutable state preserved across re-renders. See §12.2.

Leaf. A node with no children. See §3.2.

Line. A sequence of characters delimited by a line ending. See §4.3.

Line ending. One of CR, LF, or CR LF. See §4.2.

MdFlow. The specification defined by this document.

Node. A tree vertex in the AST. See §3.2.

Normative. A clause whose requirements are testable and binding on conforming implementations. See §2.1.

Pending token. A token whose slice end MAY still grow. See §5.3.

Plugin. A software module conforming to the extension contract of §9.

Priority. An integer ordering on plugins for tokenization attempts. See §9.3.

Root. The single Document node at the top of an AST.

Scheme. The portion of a URL before the first :. See §10.3.1.

Sentinel node. A DOM node emitted in place of a plugin's failed output. See §11.4.2.

Slice. The half-open byte range [start, end) of a token within source. See §3.3.

Source. The UTF-8 byte sequence being parsed.

Streaming conformance. See Class S.

Sub-token. A constituent of a token at a finer granularity (e.g., a table cell within a table row). See §3.3.

Target. One of Parser, Renderer, Full stack, or Extension host. See §2.3.

Token. A linear unit of parsing output. See §3.3.

UTF-8. The character encoding REQUIRED for MdFlow source.

Vector. A machine-readable test case in the conformance suite. See §13.

Whitelist. A closed set of admissible tag names, attribute names, or URL schemes.