# Attributes

> If you haven't yet, read introduction to Zefyr document model called Notus [here](data-and-document).

Style attributes in Notus documents are simple key-value pairs, where keys identify the attribute and value describes the style applied, for instance, `{ "heading": 1 }` defines heading style for a line of text with value `1` (equivalent of `h1` in HTML).

Note that one attribute can describe multiple different styles depending on the current value. E.g. attribute with key "heading" can be set to values `1`, `2` or `3`, equivalents of `h1`, `h2` and `h3` in HTML. This prevents a line of text from being formatted as `h1` and `h2` heading at the same time, which is intentional.

Additionally, each attribute gets assigned one of two scopes. An attribute can be either _inline-scoped_ or _line-scoped_, but not both. A good example of an inline-scoped attribute is "bold" attribute. Bold style can be applied to any character within a line, but not to the line itself. Similarly "heading" style is line-scoped and has effect only on the line as a whole.

Below table summarizes information about all currently supported attributes in Zefyr:

| Name    | Key       | Scope    | Type     | Valid values                           |
| ------- | --------- | -------- | -------- | -------------------------------------- |
| Bold    | `b`       | `inline` | `bool`   | `true`                                 |
| Italic  | `i`       | `inline` | `bool`   | `true`                                 |
| Link    | `a`       | `inline` | `String` | Non-empty string                       |
| Heading | `heading` | `line`   | `int`    | `1`, `2` and `3`                       |
| Block   | `block`   | `line`   | `String` | `"ul"`, `"ol"`, `"code"` and `"quote"` |
| Embed   | `embed`   | `inline` | `Map`    | `"hr"`, `"image"`                      |

Removing a specific style is as simple as setting corresponding attribute to `null`.

Here is an example of applying some styles to a document:

```dart
import 'package:notus/notus.dart';

void makeItPretty(NotusDocument document) {
  /// All attributes can be accessed through [NotusAttribute] class.

  // Format 5 characters starting at index 0 as bold.
  document.format(0, 5, NotusAttribute.bold);

  // Similarly for italic.
  document.format(0, 5, NotusAttribute.italic);

  // Format the first line as a heading (level 1).
  // Note that there is no need to specify character range of the whole
  // line. Simply set index position to anywhere within the line and
  // length to 0.
  document.format(0, 0, NotusAttribute.heading.level1);

  // Add a link:
  document.format(10, 15, NotusAttribute.link.fromString('https://github.com'));

  // Format a line as code block. Similarly to heading styles there is no need
  // to specify the whole character range of the line. In following example:
  // whichever line is at character index 23 in the document will get
  // formatted as code block.
  document.format(23, 0, NotusAttribute.block.code);

  // Remove heading style from the first line. All attributes
  // have `unset` property which can be used the same way.
  document.format(0, 0, NotusAttribute.heading.unset);
}
```

## How attributes are stored in Deltas

As mentioned previously a document delta consists of a sequence of `insert` operations. Attributes (if any) are stored as metadata on each of the operations.

There is a difference in how line and inline-scoped attributes are handled. Since Deltas are essentially a flat data structure there is nothing in the format itself to represent a line of text, which is required to allow storing line-scoped style attributes.

To solve this issue Notus document (similarly to Quill.js) reserves the **newline** character (aka `\n` and `0x0A`) as storage for line-scoped styles.

Notus document model is designed to enforce this rule and prevents malformed changes from being composed into a document. For instance, an attempt to apply "bold" style to a newline character will have no effect.

Below is an example of Notus document's Delta with two lines of text. The first line is formatted as an `h1` heading and on the second line there is bold-styled word "Flutter":

```dart
var delta = new Delta();
delta
  ..insert('Zefyr Editor')
  ..insert('\n', attributes: {'heading': 1})
  ..insert('A rich text editor for ');
  ..insert('Flutter', attributes: {'b': true});
  ..insert('\n');
```

Note that there is no block-level scope for style attributes. Again, given flat structure of Deltas there is nothing that can represent a block of lines which share the same style, e.g. bullet list. And we already reserved newline character for line styles.

As it turns out, this is not a big issue and it is possible to achieve a friendly user experience without this extra level in a document model.

The `block` attribute in Notus documents is line-scoped. To change a group of lines from "bullet list" to "number list" we need to update block style on each of the lines individually. Zefyr editor abstracts away such details with help of [heuristic rules](heuristics).
