The page

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What’s in a document’s front matter sets up its page: its masthead, the fonts it’s set in, its accent and what’s behind it. These work in any document, and in a deck they set every slide.

The masthead

Front matter (Title, Author, Date, Tags, Speaker, Listener) becomes the masthead; without a Title the file name is used. Speaker and Listener head the two columns, the text’s and the asides’. Any other key shows in the byline as key: value, but for those reader reads itself (font:, accent:, background: and the rest below, type: (see Work and present), open-until: (see Forms), and a deck’s time:, paging: and transition:) and one holding keys of its own (multibox:).

---
title: DevNexus, day 1
author: Josh Cummings
date: March 2026
tags: security, java
---

Fonts

font: in the front matter is the font the document is set in, and title-font: the font of its headings, when they’re to differ:

---
font: avenir-next
title-font: playfair-display georgia
---
  • A font is named as in a {…} style: hyphens for its spaces, in any case. reader loads no fonts, so it has to be installed. Give more than one and they’re tried in order; the page’s own serif comes last.
  • font: alone sets the headings too. title-font: sets every heading: the page’s title, a slide’s, and the ones under them.
  • Asides, captions and code keep their own faces, and text styled with {…} or a ::: block keeps the font it names.

Accent

accent: in the front matter is the color of what reader draws in its accent. It’s the document’s own instead of reader’s: links’ underlines, checkboxes and radios, progress bars, a timer, a picked card, a field’s outline when it has the keyboard, and the rest.

---
accent: "#4a7c59"
---

- [x] Walk
- ( ) Calm
- (x) Excited

progress:[3/7] of the week, and [a link](https://jzheaux.github.io/reader/).
The box, the radio, the bar and the link's line, in the document's green
The box, the radio, the bar and the link's line, in the document's green
  • The accent is a CSS color name or a #hex.
  • It’s one color for every theme. reader keeps its hue, but darkens it in the light and brightens it in Dark as far as it takes to read as text on the page, as it does a color an author gives an aside. With more contrast asked for, it goes further.
  • In a deck it’s every slide’s, and an exported page keeps it.
  • Callouts keep their own colors, a note’s blue and a tip’s green, and so do Good, Bad and Try.
  • With the system’s own colors on (Windows’ contrast themes), the accent is the system’s.

Backgrounds

background: in the front matter is what’s behind the page: a color, an image, or both, in either order. In a deck it’s behind every slide, and a slide says otherwise with the same line in its notes:

---
background: images/paper.jpg
---

# Every slide is on paper

---

# Except the point you came to make

<!-- background: midnightblue -->
  • A color is a CSS color name or a #hex. On a dark one the text turns light. It wins over the theme: a light one stays light in Dark.
  • An image is a path from the note, or a URL, ending in .png, .jpg, .gif, .webp, .svg or .avif. It covers the page. reader can’t see whether an image is dark, so say so with a color, which also shows while the image loads: background: images/stars.jpg black.
  • background: none in a slide’s notes leaves that slide plain.
  • A background: line isn’t shown with the notes, unless it doesn’t read as a background.
  • Backgrounds are left off paper; they’re set for a screen.

Paper

print: landscape or print: portrait says which way a deck’s sheets are turned; see Export and print.