In Bliss, cells represent discrete pieces of information.  That could be a picture, audio, video, text, number, formatted text.  The cell can contain data of any size or a single letter.  The cell can be represented as a currency, a checkbox, a radio button, a date picker, etc.  A cell could be shown as a bar graph in one document.  The same cell could be visualised as a percentage in another document.

This means that a cell’s data is stored independently from the cell’s formatting.  The cell could be said to have no formatting because the formatting is layered on as part of the visualisation.

Cells can have prefixes and suffixes.  Cells can be auto-numbered.

Cells can be stored in a hierarchy, or not.  The cell could be in a hierarchy in one document, but sitting with no parents in another.  

This means that a cell can exist within more than one hierarchy – this allows the mapping of complex relationships, e.g. A person could be a son.  The person could also be an employee.  The same person could also be a member of the local library.

The common thing in the multiple hierarchies is the person, so the person is stored in the cell.

In order to belong to a given hierarchy, it may be necessary for a cell to be classified (supports the interface) as a given type.  E.g. for a person cell to be included in the employee hierarchy, the person cell would need to be notated as supporting the person interface.

A cell can support more than one interface, so the same cell could be a person and a manager.

Supported Interfaces are notated by tagging.

Remember a group of cells is a kind of cell, so complex datasets can be created.  A cell can be a table, or a hierarchy, or a graph.