Table Style

Draft

This feature is still being designed. The attachment rules and selector system described below are stable, but the list of supported style properties is not final and will change.

BachMark separates table content from table presentation. The @table-style block lets you apply styling hints to a table without mixing presentation into the table syntax itself.

Key constraints:

• A @table-style block applies to the table directly above it.
• There are no table IDs — styling is always positional.
• No font selection or font sizes. Typography is the renderer's job.

Syntax

| A | B |
|---|---|
| 1 | 2 |

@table-style {
  :A {
    align: right
  }

  A1 {
    background: subtle
  }
}

The style block contains one or more rules, each with a selector and a set of key/value pairs. Values are typically unquoted identifiers or numbers — the renderer decides how to interpret them.

Attachment

A @table-style block always targets the table directly above it.

Between the table and the @table-style block, only whitespace and comments are allowed. Any other content (paragraphs, headings, lists, etc.) breaks the attachment — the style block has no table to target and a warning is emitted.

| A | B |
|---|---|
| 1 | 2 |

<!-- This comment is fine -->

@table-style {
  :A { align: right }
}

Selectors

Selectors use an A1-style notation similar to spreadsheets. Columns are identified by their letter (A, B, C, ...) and rows by their number (1 = header row, 2 = first body row, etc.).

Cells

Selector	Target
A1	A single cell
A1:C3	A rectangular range of cells

Columns

Selector	Target
:A	An entire column
:A:C	A range of columns (A through C)

Rows

Selector	Target
:1	An entire row (1 = header row)
:1:3	A range of rows (1 through 3)

Style properties

The exact list of properties will be defined in the spec. The following are examples of what renderers may support:

Property	Values	Description
align	left, center, right	Text alignment within cells
background	Renderer-defined tokens	Background color or style
wrap	true, false	Whether cell content wraps
border	none, thin, thick	Cell border style

Background values are intentionally abstract — tokens like subtle, warning, or accent rather than hex colors. This keeps documents portable across renderers and themes.

If a renderer doesn't recognize a property, it should ignore it and may emit a warning.

Full example

| Key | Value |
| --- | ----: |
| cpu | 42%   |
| ram | 73%   |

@table-style {
  :A { align: left }
  :B { align: right }

  B2 { background: warning }
}

This right-aligns column B, left-aligns column A, and gives cell B2 (the "73%" cell) a warning-style background.

Scope

@table-style only affects presentation, not structure. It cannot add or remove rows and columns, change the parsed text content of cells, or enable block-level content inside cells.