# Widget reference

A "widget" here is a view: an XML tag that a screen template can emit, which renders itself (and, for
containers, its children) into a `PIL.Image`. Every tag not in this list still "works" — it's silently
treated as the inert base `View`, which renders as nothing — so a typo in a tag name fails quietly rather
than with an error. If a screen renders blank where you expected something, check the tag name first.

| Tag | Category | Renders |
| --- | --- | --- |
| `<box>` | {doc}`layout` | Free-form container; positions children by `x`/`y`/`align`/`valign`. |
| `<column>` | {doc}`layout` | Stacks children top to bottom. |
| `<row>` | {doc}`layout` | Stacks children left to right. |
| `<screen>` | {doc}`layout` | The document root; a `<box>` with a filled background at the panel's full size. |
| `<text>` | {doc}`text` | A run of (optionally word-wrapped) text. |
| `<image>` | {doc}`image` | An image file loaded from config storage. |
| `<gocomics>` | {doc}`image` | Today's strip from a [GoComics](https://www.gocomics.com/) title. |
| `<weather.icon>` | {doc}`image` | A weather condition icon, from either bundled icon set. |
| `<line>` | {doc}`shapes` | A straight line between two points. |
| `<rectangle>` | {doc}`shapes` | An outlined or filled (optionally rounded) rectangle. |

Every attribute value in the template is a plain string pulled straight off the XML element — there's no
schema validation, so a misspelled attribute name is silently ignored (the widget just falls back to its
default) rather than raising an error. Keep that in mind when a screen doesn't look the way an attribute
name suggests it should.

```{toctree}
:hidden:

layout
text
image
shapes
```